Aware

by Andy Havens

  Shaking her head, Shavain pointed at the door through which Anguine had passed. “That one was born into Increase. She’s silly, her mother was silly, her father was an idiot, but she’s powerful and connected and nobody would ever think of her as anything but one of the Warden’s pawns. She has nothing to prove. She is as entrenched in her Ways as a river is in its bed. Whereas you…”

  Shavain left the implication hanging.

  Whereas I am unknown and unaffiliated.

  Kendra paused to think. Finally, she asked, “Is that why you invited me to the Fluid Court? To study me?”

  Shavain chuckled. “Wrong on both counts, m’dear. First, I don’t study. Please. Leave that to Sight. Second, this isn’t my Court. Only my family—my beautiful, whimsical children—know where the Court itself is. Not even Monday could find it on a map.”

  Kendra frowned. “Then why am I here?”

  Shavain stood up, smoothing her red dress down, and motioned for Kendra to follow her. They walked to the end of the room where Shavain opened a set of gilded, inlaid French doors. Stepping through, Kendra was hit with a wall of raucous, gleeful noise and a shock of vertigo, seeing that they were on a tiny balcony overlooking a vast ballroom. Down below, hundreds of people were talking loudly, laughing and playing games, some of which Kendra recognized: craps, roulette, blackjack. At other tables were card games she hadn’t ever heard of, some played with large, round cards the size of dinner plates. At other tables, various bright and loud contraptions were being observed, applauded and cursed.

  “A casino?” she asked.

  Shavain pointed. “All the staff – dealers, feztazsii, waiters, waitresses, elongin – are my people. All in red. They keep the wagers and the players honest.”

  Thinking about that, Kendra asked, “Don’t they mistrust you? The other Houses? I mean, you’re entirely unpredictable, right?”

  “In this context? Oh, no. There’s no other House they’d trust to run an exercise in chance.”

  Kendra nodded. “OK. I see that. They’re paying for your, uh…”

  “Perspective.”

  Kendra nodded again. “It’s like one of the Ways. Other Houses can use some of them. In this case, they’re using not a single Way, but the uh…”

  “Perspective.”

  “Yes, yes. I get it.” Kendra did get it. Who would you trust to set up a money market account? Increase. How about a vacation? Maybe Release.

  “And Earth rents its gardens for picnics,” she muttered out loud, thinking about Rain Vernon and his topiary.

  “Quite,” agreed Shavain, beckoning Kendra to return with her to the sitting room. When the door closed behind them, the noise was cut off entirely.

  “I still don’t understand why I’m here. Why you used up a wager to have Vannia bring me to you. And while we’re at it, why you gave Vannia a Flux ring for me but told her it held a Chaos Way.”

  Shavain moved away from Kendra and looked out a window. It was covered in a thin, lacy curtain that let in light but obscured the details of the world outside. Kendra noticed her hostess was short again, shorter even than herself. And that her hair had changed style. And that she seemed very young. And that her skin was a deep, dark brown.

  I wonder if she’s even in control of that?

  “Last question first. What’s more Chaotic than a ring you think is Chaos but is not?” Shavain said. “And I didn’t specifically give it Vannia to give to you. Our little friend has… quite a lot of leeway to act on her own in how she interprets my wishes.”

  “But you knew it would tip some kind of balance in my favor?” Kendra asked, scowling.

  “I knew it would do something to displease whomever was putting you in danger. That’s enough of an incentive.”

  “Why?” Kendra was truly confused and still angry about her role in how Kaolyn the greenman had died.

  “Because their motives are simple and predictable.”

  Kendra knew enough about Chaos to know that, yes… being redictable was incentive enough to strike a blow against another House.

  However, she asked, “Predictable? Maybe. Simple? Not to me.”

  “Let me illuminate my thoughts, then, dear,” said Shavain. “If I were Bloodlord Sekhemib Senbi or a Master in Earth, I would probably just kill you.

  Taken aback, Kendra stammered, “That’s uh…”

  “It’s not personal. They just don’t like change. If I were Solomon Monday, I would never have let you leave my Library. I would have kept you in a Seeming somewhere that looked just fine and dandy to you. I would have spun a tapestry of a tale for you and kept you blind within it for forever and studied your reactions.”

  Kendra stayed silent, waiting. Listening. Trying to understand.

  Stroking the gauzy drape, Shavain continued. “If I were Gareth, I would seek to control you. Harness you to my various, petty schemes. If I were Elizabeth Percy, Lady of Release, I would claim you as your mother’s daughter. If I was Hahang Su of Flux I think I would offer you sanctuary, free and clear, until you’d made a choice. And then, if you decided against Flux, I’d kill you before your declaration was known.”

  Kendra wasn’t sure she understood any of that reasoning. Or that Shavain was even correct. Or that she was even telling her the truth as she understood it. But I’m meeting with the second ruler of a Domain within the span of a few months, she thought. Why? Who should care this much about a stray like me?

  “And you?” Kendra finally spoke. “The Red Brothers won’t offer me a place in Chaos. You’re not going to kill or imprison me. You’re not going to give me sanctuary. Why?

  Shavain turned away from the window. Backlit by the hazy, white light from outside, her face was almost entirely shadow. But Kendra thought she detected a sad smile as Shavain made the gesture of shaking and then throwing a handful dice.

  Kendra nodded. “I’m more useful to you as a free agent.”

  Now Shavain laughed out loud. And it was not a pretty laugh. “Oh, darling,” she said, moving away from the window to take Kendra’s arm. “You’re very good at being horribly wrong several times in one statement. It’s refreshingly innocent.”

  They walked to the door at the other end of the room and it opened, Parrot Girl waiting on the other side, face strictly neutral.

  Bending over to kiss Kendra on the cheek, Shavain said softly, “I have no interest in anything or anyone ‘useful.’”

  Signaling to Vannia to take Kendra away, Shavain turned her back on the girls, saying, “And if you think you are free, you have learned nothing today. Goodbye, my dear. Bonne chance.”

  Vannia shut the door and led Kendra down the hall.

  “Are we still friends?” the little blonde girl asked. Her wings were hidden, and she looked about twelve, dressed in a simple blue frock with a bit of white lace at the hem.

  Kendra nodded. “I think we will always be friends,” she said.

  “Good!” Vannia exclaimed, skipping a few steps ahead down the long hallway and waiting for Kendra to catch up.

  “The boss said I can keep keeping an eye on you. And it’s OK with her if I kill people to keep you safe. At least for now.”

  That made Kendra pause. She’d heard Vannia referred to as the Red Brothers’ assassin. But the girl had never spoken of it directly.

  “You don’t need to kill anyone for me, Parrot Girl,” Kendra said quietly.

  “Maybe not,” Vannia agreed, taking Kendra’s hand, trying hard to walk rather than skip. “Maybe so. Maybe not, maybe so. You never, never, never know. Either way… “

  She turned and stared Kendra straight in the eyes with a look that was simultaneously gleeful and terrifying:

  “I’ll be your Huckleberry.”

  As they left the house, Kendra thought she heard laughter from another room, but it was muffled and far away, so she couldn’t be sure.

  * * * * *

  From the highest branch of an enormous dead oak tree, a crow looked down at the Manor Anguine and the Western Expan
se of the Perlucid Estates. She had just confirmed two things.

  Shavain Orro is the current incarnation of the Red Brothers, the bird thought.

  And Increase is involved in whatever knots are tightening around Kendra.

  She hopped off the branch and into the sky, whirling into a widening spiral until she could see the entire estate beneath her. Her Way – a subtle and ancient thing, not well understood by even the wisest of young Reckoners – followed Kendra and Vannia as they stepped onto the Narrow Road. It would alert her whenever they came to rest again for more than a few minutes.

  Keeping tabs on Chaos was never easy, and Kendra had been “off the grid” for quite some time. Tess, the crow, knew that Kendra had survived her encounter with Rain Vernon and had gone wandering off for part of a day in the company of the Chaos assassin girl and the boy from the Library. But then she’d gone into Bardonne’s, a Sanctuary with many unobservable Ways in and out, and Tess had lost her trail.

  Starting from Bardonne’s, knowing Vannia’s location at any given moment was practically impossible. It was not hard, though, to keep tabs on a variety of places where she and her friends might meet up. Locations where Chaos gathered. Other sites that might provide refuge to an unaffiliated Reckoner. Places where Kendra had been earlier.

  The Perlucid Estates had not been on the top on her list. There were a dozen or so like it over which Tess had set various watchful Ways. That the girl and her green-winged protector had shown up here was another scrap of evidence in a pattern the crow had traced since her reawakening.

  Tess shifted her wings and banked into a figure-eight flight. After centuries encased in the Way that had bound her to the Librarian as an inanimate tool, the joy of flying was still very much a newly remembered pleasure for her.

  I will settle with Monday on my terms, she thought. Had he looked closer. Had he looked deeper, which he should have done, he would have seen me inside. He is Sight, after all. But because he was not directly complicit in my binding… and because of debts which he does not understand… he will not feel the full measure of my anger.

  She banked and dipped, flying more like a hawk than an ordinary raven.

  Hahang Su, however: she I will devour.

  At the edge of the estates she spotted subtle movement among the trees.

  One of the Warden’s guard units, she thought. Let us see how he wields his shiny weapons in this age.

  She circled lower, dropping below the sightline of the trees, then flitted from branch to branch, sometimes a long jump, sometimes a short flight. As she neared the guards that she’d spied from on high, she wrapped herself in several Ways that maybe only three or four Reckoners alive would even recognize as such. With a final touch on a low branch she changed, turned, and alighted…

  …in the form of a nearly naked young woman, dark of skin and dark of hair, petite and slight of build. Almost too tiny to even be a modern human, she seemed a creature of shade and dusk, clad only in a few scraps of deeper shadow.

  She approached the three Reckoners of Increase, doing nothing to disguise or muffle her approach. She came straight down the dirt road that passed through the estate, waist-length hair swaying free in the breeze and in time to her steady, strong steps.

  The first of them saw her and gestured to the others. Two males, one female. Clad in forest camouflage and carrying a variety of Mundane devices, some enhanced by Ways, some simply efficient and complex in their own right. The female was about to push a button on one of her contraptions when Tess’ Way came upon her and all the Mundane could think was –

  This tiny, dark woman knows what I should want to be…

  That is what they all thought. They were accustomed to the Ways of Increase. To a system that promised them “more” of whatever it is they were good at or wanted or were working toward. In the case of these three guards it was chiefly respect, authority and money, in that order. They knew their place in their House and knew what they needed to do in order to advance. They understood the rules and followed them, seeking ways to help others do the same. They were not greedy or jealous. Those were unhelpful and counterproductive emotions. They knew that in many situations, the best way to achieve more for yourself was to help your comrades do the same.

  But while the quest itself was well understood, the end was… misty. More is good, yes. More of the things we like. More of the feelings of accomplishment. More friendship. More strength. There was no doubt that honor and reward came through advancement within Increase.

  But… why?

  Was there a final cause? An ultimate goal? Was there a point at which they could stop and say, I have achieved that which I sought? What is “enough?”

  The young woman walked toward them and none of the guards thought it odd that she wore almost no clothes, that her hair fell freely, that her feet were bare on the hard, rocky surface of the road. Her hands were open at her sides, palms forward, an invitation. She smiled at them and they smiled back. Her hips swayed like a boat in the curve of a river’s flow.

  She knows! They all thought. She knows what I should be! Where I should go! Who I should love and what I should do to win that love!

  They were excited to meet her, to talk to her. To share their secrets and hopes. They wanted her wisdom and her blessing. They wanted her to put one arm around them and with the other point and say, Go there. You will find what you seek there. You will find yourself.

  She stopped in front of them, just out of arm’s reach, and they ached to speak. But she already knew them! They ached to touch her… but only so she could know them more fully.

  They had already dropped their devices. One of the men had begun to cry a little, sensing how important this moment was. The other two held their breaths, waiting to be filled, somehow, with purpose.

  She took two more steps and stood right next to them. So close they could feel the warmth of her on their cheeks. Smell the tang of rain and lightning in her hair. They trembled.

  Smiling sadly, she said simply, “Still? Just… this? Two thousand years… I had hoped for better.”

  She vanished and they were so startled and grief-struck by her disappearance that they barely noticed the black bird flying up and away from their midst.

  There in the forest at the edge of the Perlucid Estates, the three soldiers of Increase collapsed on the ground and wept into each other’s’ arms. They missed their routine check-in and their relief team found them there, asleep, with no memory of the encounter besides a sense of profound loss.

  High above them the crow circled, watching two girls as they headed out on the Narrow Roads.

  * * * * *

  The sounds of laughter rose up from the street outside her open window. Dr. Sasha Lyonne wondered if she should close it before her next session started. Some people didn’t like the outside world to intrude on their therapy, and as this was an initial visit for a new patient, she decided that prudence trumped fresh air.

  Leaning onto the frame to bring it down, she saw that the laughter was coming from a group of neighborhood children playing a game with a couple of tennis balls. Not just children, she realized. Four kids and a tall, blonde man in a shirt and tie who had taken off his coat to play with the kids. They’d toss him a ball and he’d juggle it from foot to foot, like with a soccer ball, and then kick it back to them. He’s good, she thought as she leaned down harder.

  The thump of the window frame hitting the sill coincided almost perfectly with the knock on her door and she called out, “Please come in.”

  Most therapists Sasha knew had a receptionist. Most scheduled patients back-to-back and needed someone to monitor a waiting area. Sasha saw half as many patients and charged twice as much, leaving her plenty of wiggle room between sessions.

  She recalled her mentor saying, “Quality of care is much more important than quantity. Especially for the practitioner. Psychotherapy takes time. More time with fewer patients will yield better results. For them and you.”

  Papa, she thou
ght to herself, walking to door to greet her new patient. How I miss you.

  The name she’d been given as a referral was “Leonard Bronson.” The man who came through the door was not Leonard Bronson, and she recognized him immediately.

  “Gareth Ezer?” She knew she must look like a fool, eyes wide open and jaw hanging down in surprise.

  But she couldn’t help herself. He may be the richest man on the planet, she thought, helpless not to repeat to herself one of the rumors splashed across a variety of supermarket tabloids. At least in the top ten.

  “I am he, Dr. Lyonne,” Ezer replied, holding out his hand for her to shake. She did so, tepidly, embarrassed immediately that she hadn’t given him her usual smooth, firm grip.

  “I didn’t… I mean…” she stammered.

  He smiled at her. That same smile she’d seen on television dozens of times. The smile of someone giving or receiving a major award. The smile of beneficence, understanding, strength and quiet wisdom. The smile of a confidant. A trusted partner. An old friend.

  “Please forgive my ruse, Doctor,” he said, his voice like cool water on a hot, dry day, “But I rarely go anywhere these days under my own name.”

  “Oh. I understand. Yes. Of course.”

  He stood waiting patiently until she realized he was doing so. Then she invited him through the small front room into her actual office. Gesturing at either of the comfortable chairs on one side of her desk, she went around to sit behind it.

  Unbuttoning his tailored-but-not-too-expensive jacket as he sat, Ezer remarked, “You sit opposite from your patients at a desk? Isn’t that a bit… removed?”

  She shook her head. “It’s purposeful. A specific detail of how I practice. If it troubles you I can come around your side.”

  He shook his head, a half smile playing across his handsome, weathered face. “No, no. I was just curious. My guess is that you use it as a prop, as you just did, to see if patients remark on it. And then to observe their reaction and preference. It’s a good, quick way to establish a particular zone of control. Or confidence.”