Impostor Syndrome

by Mishell Baker

  “They’ll forget,” I said. “Even something like that, they can just . . . forget?” I felt so cold that I was surprised my breath didn’t form a cloud in the air.

  “The price of immortality,” he said. “Some few fey, those with Echoes, will remember. But most, in the time it takes for the moon to make a full cycle, will consider that site a mysterious ruin, a ruin whose very physical presence diminishes from month to month, year to year, as its significance fades in the collective consciousness and reality shapes itself to match.”

  “So the sidhe . . .”

  “Will no longer be the fey who built and reigned from the White Rose. Our history, our identity, existed only so long as it was shaped in that stone.”

  I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Why would Elliott do this? No matter how angry he was, why would he try to erase a people’s collective identity so thoroughly? That level of vengeance was more along the lines of—

  Goddamn it.

  “Shiverlash,” I said aloud.

  “I beg your pardon?” said the duke.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Look, you need to get up. We won’t let the memory of the White Rose die, I promise. You have my promise. I was there, and I’ll remember, for one.”

  He was looking much more himself now, so I pushed myself to my feet, then reached to help him. Several of his retinue rushed forward to lend their hands as well.

  “What good is the memory of a human?” he said as he carefully regained his feet. “It is longer than ours, yes, but it dies with you.”

  “Sidhe can pass images and memories to each other,” I said. “There were guards there who knew every tile of that place, who had Echoes. If all of you work together, pass those memories from person to person, you can remember it forever. And you should,” I said with a sudden vehemence. “You should remember all of it. Not just the way the sidhe remember it, but my memory of it too, and Caveat’s, and Elliott’s. The dead spirits in the bones of it. The rage that led someone to destroy it. Because if you don’t remember all of it, you’ll just build it the same way, and doom it all over again.”

  The duke’s hand was still wrapped around my forearm, but his eyes sparked anger at this. “You would blame us for this atrocity?”

  “Oh, I blame the one who did it. Believe me. There are going to be . . . conversations. But if you don’t acknowledge why someone thought it was okay, you’ll never fix the problem. And Arcadia has problems, Your Grace. Serious problems that are only just—”

  “Millie!”

  I heard the pounding of sneakers on the forest floor, saw Shock running toward us from the direction of the portal. He held the Medial Vessel in one hand as though he were trying to choke it to death.

  “Oh thank God,” I said, moving to meet him.

  “The guards know I’m with you!” he said, panting, as he all but crashed into me. “Take this and get out of here, now!”

  I snatched the bag from him, stuffing it down the side of my trousers, against my hip.

  “What is happening?” said Duke Skyhollow, looking slightly affronted.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I have to go.”

  “You are in danger?”

  “I . . . took something from the palace. Good thing, too, or it would have been destroyed. Anyway, I need it to stop Dame Belinda, but there’s no time to explain; I think the guards will be after me shortly. I’m sorry.”

  “Worry not,” said Skyhollow. “You have given me a new purpose, renewed my life. For this, you have my protection. Return home safely, and I shall delay the guards when they arrive.”

  “I owe you one,” I said. “Seriously. Take care of yourself, and think about what I said.” I moved to give him a quick, probably painful kiss on the cheek, and then turned to Shock as the duke headed off toward the portal.

  “Is Caryl all right?”

  “A couple of guards caught her, took her to the prison. I was on my way to help when I ran into Father.”

  “Your dad is there?”

  “I was surprised too! I could not just give him one vial, and I did not trust him with the rest—he was very angry. I ran. I hope I made the right call.”

  “And Caryl?”

  “That is why my father was there! He knew, somehow, that she had been caught. He was going to save her.”

  I let out a long breath of relief. If Winterglass was good for one thing, it was saving Caryl.

  “Get somewhere safe, kiddo,” I said. “You’ve done your part. You’re free.”

  Shock nodded and took off running.

  “Fly, you fool!” I yelled after him in my best Ian McKellen, which wasn’t very good. Not sure if he got the reference, but he did see my larger point. He shifted into his natural form, taking to the air.

  I, however, did not have the luxury of wings. It was difficult to find my way back to the road, not only because the foliage made traveling in straight lines impossible, but because I kept getting distracted by extraordinary views and obscenely cavorting fey. Despite delays, I eventually found my way to a spot where I could see the road through the trees ahead.

  That was when vines erupted from the ground and wrapped themselves around my ankles, twined their way up my legs, engulfed my torso and arms. I couldn’t move. I thrashed in place, but the vines held fast, thick as my wrist.

  “What now?” I said aloud, addressing my remark to the forest canopy.

  “Lies,” said Duke Skyhollow’s voice quietly behind me. “I always forget that humans cannot help but lie, even to their allies.”

  “What? What did I lie about?” I tried to twist around to see him, but the vines had snared me too tightly.

  I heard his footsteps approaching. Not just his, either. When he finally came around to stand where I could see him, he was flanked by two of the palace guards: Greyfall and the steel-blue woman, Whisperdrift.

  “According to Her Majesty’s guards,” said the duke, “you are the one who destroyed the tower.”

  “Not true!” I said.

  “You would accuse the sidhe of untruth?” Skyhollow scoffed.

  “They’re not lying,” I said. “They’re just mistaken. They can say it if they believe it to be true.”

  The guards fixed me with the same cold stare as Skyhollow. I knew they could both understand me; that must have been why these two, in particular, had come.

  I struggled against my restraints. “Look, I didn’t mean to destroy the palace,” I said.

  “But you did destroy it,” said Skyhollow. He looked heartbroken. “All those pretty words about preserving its memory, from the one who made the effort necessary.”

  “It took two people,” I said. “I thought I was alone. I thought there was no way the other stone would really be endangered.”

  “You told me you would do it,” said Greyfall, “if I did not meet your demands.”

  “I was bluffing!” I said. “I never really meant to do it; in fact, I took great pains to make sure I wouldn’t!”

  Greyfall shrugged. “Either you were lying then, or you are lying now, and I tire of trying to sort through human deception. You will come with us and stand trial.”

  I thought of the Vessel, tucked against my hip, so close to the road, so close to the Gate. If the guards took it from me, they’d return it to its “rightful” owner. Dame Belinda would have my blood right there in her hands, after being told that I had destroyed the center of the Arcadia Project’s power. I did not want to find out what she’d use blood magic to do once she decided to stop pulling her punches.

  “Skyhollow,” said Whisperdrift, in a gentler tone than Greyfall had used. “Please release the baroness into our—”

  Before she could finish, a bone-rattling roar slashed through the hazy air, shredding the sidhe’s calm. Batlike wings spread, Brand dropped out of the sky like the judgment of God. He shot a venomous tail spine right into Greyfall’s eye before knocking Skyhollow to the ground.

  Whisperdrift rushed to Greyfall’s aid, yanking the gold-slic
ked spine from the eye socket of the screaming fey and dropping it to the ground. She murmured a quick spell, and Greyfall’s eye looked as though it had never been pierced.

  “Catch that beast!” cried Skyhollow from the ground. Brand responded by seizing Skyhollow with all four paws and beating his wings frantically, lifting the man from the ground and carrying him away. Low and slow they flew, smashing and tearing their way through the tangled growth.

  Of course the two guards pursued. I had suddenly slipped way down the priority list, being immobilized and all. But I wasn’t going to waste the opportunity. Carefully I curled down the fingers of one hand, inched the latex of my surgical glove up over my palm. Slowly, twisting and tugging and pinching, I scooted the glove up and over the fattest part of my hand, then used my thumb to push it the rest of the way off until it dropped to the ground.

  I circled my wrist, nearly dislocated the damn thing trying to stretch my bare fingers down to touch the nearest edge of the vine that held me. Urgency lent me mobility, and when the edge of my littlest finger barely brushed the vine that was cuffing me, the whole structure fell apart, dumping me onto the forest floor. I grabbed my glove and slipped it back on, then levered myself to my feet and started stumbling toward the road.

  I nearly ran into Brand as he came plummeting back down through the branches and landed heavily in my path.

  “Get on,” he said.

  “Where are the guards?”

  “Helping Skyhollow,” he said. “I might have shredded his wings and dropped him into a sinkhole.”

  Brand crouched, and I heaved myself onto his back. “This is not going to increase your stock with the Seelie Court, you know,” I said. “Also, Skyhollow isn’t a bad guy. I do not approve of—GAH!”

  Brand, ignoring me as usual, started running through the trees before I had even fully settled myself on his back. Conversation was impossible as I attempted to right myself, and then away we went.

  39

  The road that led from Skyhollow Estate was made for creatures that walked on two legs; the ward simply didn’t acknowledge Brand’s presence, making it pointless for him to use it. Instead, he cut through the rocky, semiarid wilderness to the right side of the road, where his physics-bending strides would put him at an advantage over two-legged pursuers.

  “We should have practiced this,” I grunted as we raced along, fast enough to make me squint against the warm dry wind. It was hard to stay seated properly without the full length of my leg muscles to squeeze against his back; mostly I just gripped his mane tight and held on for dear life.

  Unfortunately, Brand had chosen the side of the road with most of the rock formations, and after a few minutes’ exultant gallop we found ourselves navigating a sort of maze. This side of the landscape had been on my left as I’d made my way to the estate before the heist, and I was almost positive it hadn’t been quite such a labyrinth at the time.

  “Damn it,” said Brand just as I was about to ask him if he’d noticed the same thing. “He’s fucking with the landscape.”

  “What do you mean? Who is? What’s happening?”

  “Duke Skyhollow has a certain amount of influence over his land. He doesn’t want us to escape, and so the land is responding to that.”

  Brand darted back and forth, trying desperately to find a view between the multiplying rock formations. It was like a dream; they never changed while we were watching, but then we’d turn to find more behind us than had been there before.

  “At this rate we’ll never find our way back to L.A.,” I said, readjusting my grip on his mane in an effort to keep my seat through his wild changes of direction. “We’re fucked.”

  He paused for a moment, giving me some relief. “Maybe if we cross to the other side of the road I can help us out a little,” Brand said, “but it’s not going to be pretty.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’ll have to plan our escape route so that it passes by that abyss. Spirits won’t go near it; the closer we are to it the less likely that weird magic will spring up to stop us.”

  “Is the abyss dangerous?”

  “Not unless we jump in, but it’s fucking creepy.”

  It was also on the other side of the road, which meant we had to find our way back across. We could no longer see the road over the maze of rocks, but Brand was able to estimate the direction we were moving by keeping his eyes on the slant of the shadows.

  “So long as we keep heading this way,” he said, “we’ll eventually get back to the road. We were mostly traveling parallel to it, so it shouldn’t take long.”

  Of course, the nature of a maze is that it makes it impossible to keep going in one direction, and without a bird’s-eye view, you can’t tell which turning is going to eventually point you the way you want.

  “Why are we even bothering with this?” I said in sudden frustration. “Can’t you fly?”

  “That’s bad for two reasons,” said Brand. “One, you’d fall right the fuck off if I did that. Two, as much of a pain in the ass as these rocks are, they’re also hiding us from the royal guards, who are still after us—don’t doubt it for a second. Skyhollow’s people too now, I’ll bet. The minute I launch myself into the air, they’ll make a beeline for us. They’ve got wings too; my only advantage is on the ground.”

  “Not much advantage at the moment,” I said.

  “Just be patient,” said Brand. “I’ve had contact with my Echo recently, so my mind is razor sharp. I’m tracking our position even as the rocks lead us off course. Pretty sure I know exactly where we are. Just have to find an opening.”

  Putting my trust in a manticore was not a thing I’d ever anticipated needing to do, but there we were. As Brand paused again to consider his options at yet another blocked pathway, I leaned forward to give him a scratch behind the ear with my gloved hand.

  “What have I said about petting me?”

  “You’re Seelie now. You need to get used to cuddles.”

  “I will fucking throw you off and eat you.”

  He broke into a sudden lope, nearly unseating me. I held on tight as he made an unnecessarily complicated figure-eight pattern around a line of rock columns.

  “You can stop punishing me any time now,” I said.

  “I’m not sure I can. And hey, look there.”

  Sure enough, the shimmering heat mirage of the road’s enchantment loomed before us, closer all that time than I’d dared to hope. Brand galloped across it to the other side, which was less littered with rocks but had a profusion of scrubby plant life and a few scattered, twisted trees.

  “Do you know where the abyss is located?” I asked him. “I can’t remember exactly where it was along the path.”

  “I can feel it,” he said. “It’s like reality has a bad headache. I just follow the throb.”

  “Super sorry about that, by the way. Claybriar was only at that train station to get pummeled because of me.” Then I stopped, reconsidered. “But you were helping Vivian at the time, so fuck you, apology retracted.”

  When Brand loped through the undergrowth, it writhed as though it were trying to catch at his limbs. He hissed in pain.

  “Fucking Skyhollow!” he growled, trying to weave around the thickest plant growth and find bare patches of spongy Arcadian sand. Its golden expanse shimmered in the late-afternoon light.

  I could measure our progress toward the abyss by the way the plants began to thin out and the sand to lose its luster. At last I spotted darkness on the horizon.

  “I think that’s close enough,” said Brand. “Do you see anyone pursuing us?”

  I glanced over my shoulder, which almost made me slip sideways, but I steadied myself as I turned forward again, feeling a surge of hope. “I think we lost them,” I said.

  “Not slowing down,” said Brand, “just in case.”

  “Do you know how to find the Gate from here?”

  “I think so,” he said. “But I’ll admit I wasn’t really paying close attention the las
t couple of times I got dragged through it.”

  “When we get there,” I said, “just drop me off. I need you to stay on this side, help Caryl and the others if they need it.”

  Brand was still moving fast enough that the abyss quickly shifted its way along the horizon and out of our sight. I was happy to have it behind us.

  More rocks appeared as we began to get close to the Gate; I knew the Gate was located atop a large formation that I’d easily be able to recognize. It had been invisible to me before I’d signed the Project contract, but thanks to Caryl’s little lecture about anti-civilian wards, now I understood why it wasn’t anymore. Ah, Caryl. I hoped Winterglass was keeping her safe.

  As we rounded a jagged wall of vermilion rock, Shiverlash appeared in our path so abruptly that Brand’s paws threw up a spray of sand and I slid halfway off his back. He had to crouch so that I could ease myself gently the rest of the way onto the ground.

  Leaning against Brand’s side, I stared at the Beast Queen of the Unseelie Court in the full glory of her eyeless natural form.

  “What fresh, roaring trash fire is this?” I said.

  The queen’s greasy black wings were folded, her talons braced in the sand as she turned her melted-wax face toward us. Despite her wings, there was no mistaking her for sidhe; she was half again as tall, and her proportions were all wrong, more avian than human. It occurred to me suddenly that Foxfeather’s doomed coyote friend had also lacked eyes. Something tried to knit itself together in my memory about that, but my brain refused to cooperate.

  Shiverlash opened her jawless mouth, a vertical oval, and a stream of guttural Unseelie words poured out.

  “Nice try,” said Brand. “I’m not your pet anymore. I’ve sworn fealty to the Seelie King.” For the first time, he seemed pretty smug about that.

  Shiverlash hesitated, clearly not understanding his words, but having no trouble noticing that her command had not compelled him. After a moment’s pause, Caveat appeared on her shoulder, projecting a weary not-again vibe that was straight out of Tjuan’s playbook.

  “Caveat? Where the hell did you come from?” I asked her. “Weren’t you with Caryl?”