Impostor Syndrome

by Mishell Baker

  “Tjuan,” I said. “God, it’s good to see you. Are you all right?”

  No sooner had I asked the question than Tjuan vanished. Oh, right. He wasn’t actually there. Anything I asked him, Caveat had to jump back into his head to deliver.

  “This is going to get awkward,” I said to Brand. “It’s everything that’s annoying about voice calls combined with everything that’s annoying about texting.”

  “When should I poke Birdbrain to call the spirit back?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Just kind of . . . double the amount of time it takes me to say everything, to give him a chance to respond.”

  Brand mumbled something to Shiverlash, and “Tjuan” reappeared.

  “Let’s not get into that,” he said. Which, honestly, I should have predicted. “Tell me what it is you need to tell me.”

  “Fine,” I said to his image.

  Rather than freezing the image when he was finished talking, Caveat showed a seamless loop of him sitting idle; he continued to breathe, to blink, in impassive silence. It made his presence seem more immediate, less like talking to a recording.

  “God, this is so weird,” I said. “I—I miss you. Shiverlash is going to help, though. And before you give me that look I know you’re going to give me, she’s a mixed bag, and it’s not all pure evil, I swear. She did just destroy the White Rose, but . . . we’ll talk about that later. Anyway, I’ve pissed off Winterglass, probably irrevocably, so Shiverlash is the only one left I can talk into commanding Qualm to show up at the police station with the gun. In return she wants me to help her free the spirits in her lands. She said she’d leave Seelie lands alone now. But if I go with her, she’ll send your facade to the police station with the weapon in its hand. She’ll command Qualm to stay passive inside there for years; as a fey his only choices will be to tell the truth—that he did shoot that guy—or stay silent. Either way, they can’t keep you in prison when they’d now have zero evidence to hold you there. Right? This is the only way to get you out.”

  I stopped for long enough that Caveat could assume I was finished, and Tjuan’s image disappeared. This time, when he did, I started to cry.

  “Don’t do that,” said Brand. “Seriously, I am not equipped to deal with that shit.”

  “You and me both,” I said. I dashed furiously at my cheeks. “I gotta pull myself together before he comes back. If Caveat is projecting what she sees . . . Tjuan’s got enough to deal with right now without my stupid feelings.” I scrubbed at my face vigorously. “How’s that?”

  Brand leaned over to peer closely at my face. “Just looks like your normal level of ugly to me.”

  “Thanks, Feathers. Tell Shiverlash to call Caveat back.”

  When Tjuan reappeared, he finally had an expression on his face, and it was a dire one.

  “Are you out of your goddamned mind?” he said.

  “Ah, there’s my partner,” I murmured to Brand. But Tjuan was still talking.

  “Don’t get me wrong. I can see that you thought this through, and I don’t have a better plan. But this is not okay. You talk about going to Unseelie lands to ‘free the spirits,’ but you realize what that means, right? Those lands are full of sidhe and their estates. Whatever Shiverlash just did to destroy the White Rose—you better believe we’re having a conversation about that later—she’s going to do that to every sidhe in her lands, including the ones who have Echoes here, and she’s going to kill them. You remember that’s her deal, right? Death to all the sidhe? She has literally said that, about eight times, Millie.”

  That seemed to be the end of his rant. He sat there staring through me, arrested in an endless loop of expectation.

  “You know I wouldn’t allow her to do that,” I said. “I’ll find some way to undo the protection on their estates without— She can’t order me directly, so she’ll have to—”

  It all sounded stupid. He was right. There was no way to end spirit enslavement on Shiverlash’s timetable without essentially destroying the Arcadia Project, and, with it, human innovation and progress. This was not a decision I got to make on my own, or even with my partner’s help.

  “What choice do I have?” I finally blurted at his passive image. “Leave you in prison for ten years? Twenty? I don’t even know. I can’t, Tjuan. I can’t. I literally cannot live with it if I know there’s something I could have done to prevent it.”

  I let that sit there for a moment, then decided there was nothing I could add. I tipped my head toward Brand.

  When Tjuan returned, he looked downright livid.

  “Fuck your guilt,” he said. “Cry me a goddamned river. You expect me to just run off, free as a bird, knowing I owe it to the genocide of an entire fucking race? The sidhe won’t have their estates, they’ll be outnumbered, and they won’t even be able to fight back with magic, because Shiverlash can silence them. Remember that? The whole reason that her own fucking husband turned on her a thousand years ago? Because she was too fucking powerful and was going to exterminate the sidhe. And you want to give her an iron weapon, and say you’re doing it for me? Fuck that. I’ll rot in here first. Take back your goddamned spirit and leave me alone.”

  He folded his arms and sat back with finality. Caveat shifted back into her accustomed visual illusion, taking her place on Shiverlash’s shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “He told me to go, and I won’t force myself on him.”

  “Is he mad at you?” I said. “He knows what happened to him isn’t your fault, right?”

  “He doesn’t want to see me again,” said Caveat. “I have to respect that.”

  I knew that had to hurt. But I didn’t know what to say to her; she was possibly the only being in existence whose emotions I understood even less than I understood my partner’s.

  “Don’t translate this next bit,” Brand said to Caveat. “Here’s the thing, Millie. Shiverlash didn’t understand a word of what you and Tjuan just said. So you can just lie to her and tell her you’re going to go through with it.”

  I shook my head slowly. “No,” I said. “Lying to fey feels like punching someone who’s tied to a chair. I’ll do it to some asshole I don’t expect to deal with again, but we’re running a little short on friendly fey monarchs.”

  Brand let out a frustrated growl. “This does not end with you and Shiverlash holding hands,” he said. “The sooner you start treating her like the opponent she is, the sooner you start winning this game.”

  “Elliott,” said Caveat.

  Brand and I both turned to her in confusion, but she wasn’t looking at us.

  “If you have something to say to Millie,” she went on, “you should say it so that she can hear you. I’m not your translator.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Elliott’s here?”

  “Spirits have no here in Arcadia,” Caveat reminded me. “But he has been attempting to address me since I returned from speaking with Tjuan.”

  I pushed myself to my feet, feeling vulnerable and strange. “What does he want?”

  Caveat just sat still, staring off blankly.

  “Elliott,” I said to thin air, turning myself around slowly. “Go ahead and show yourself. It’s not like I can do anything to hurt you, and if Shiverlash were going to, I guess she would have by now.”

  After a moment Elliott appeared, perched warily on Brand’s back in his original winged-iguana form. The sight of it tugged at something in me, something on the wobbly border between affection and grief.

  “There you are,” I said.

  He looked at me impassively. “Only you are hearing this,” he said. “Not Brand, not the queen.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “King Winterglass, Shock, and Caryl just finished destroying the Alondra facade, and now they are searching for you. If you like, I can let them know your location.”

  If Caryl and Shock were with Winterglass, surely he wouldn’t murder me, right? He must be feeling at least a little bit kindly toward our side, toward m
e, if they were all searching for me together. And thinking of him gave me an idea of how to put off refusing Shiverlash until I was back on my turf and she couldn’t summon any spirits to attack me.

  “All right,” I said to Elliott. “Do it.”

  43

  “Your Majesty,” I said to Queen Shiverlash with Caveat translating. “I’ve not yet managed to reach an agreement with Tjuan, but I’m afraid that will have to wait. I’ve just received word that King Winterglass knows our location. He is on his way here, and he is not alone.”

  “Do you think he means to attack?” she said, her oil-black wings rustling.

  “I’m not sure which of us he’s after. We’d best split up. Can you get away from here unseen? A personal cloaking spell doesn’t work on me, so I’m safest if I stay put.”

  “He will not detect me,” said Shiverlash, and immediately launched herself into the air.

  “Well,” I said, turning to Brand. “That was surprisingly easy.” Then I noticed his murderous expression. “Uh-oh.”

  “So he’s coming here, is he?”

  “Brand,” I said firmly. “I know he sort of . . . exploded you. But to be fair, you were trying to kill Caryl. Please don’t attack him.”

  He bristled, looming over me. “Give me one damned good reason.”

  “Because you want to see Naderi, ever again?” I said, holding my hands palm out and backing away. “Also, he could kill you?”

  “Or I could kill him!”

  “And if you do, who the fuck gets his scepter?”

  “Me!” said Brand with a grin. “I’d be a great king!”

  “Even if that were anywhere in the same zip code as true, you’re Seelie now. You can’t use that scepter.”

  He sat down heavily on the sand, exhaled in frustration. “Shock, then! He’s all right.”

  “Shock doesn’t want to be king, never has, and, P.S., don’t attack Winterglass. Because it’s rude to attack someone who comes in peace, because you’d probably just get exploded again, and honestly mostly because I fucking said so, and I’m in charge of whether you get to see your Echo again.”

  “I promise I won’t attack Winterglass,” said Brand. “But let the record show that I’m killing him in my mind.”

  It took about an hour for them to reach us, and when they did, I hardly had time to process the horror that was King Winterglass in his native form before Caryl ran to me and threw her arms around me, kissed me squarely on the mouth.

  Okay, so we were doing this. Publicly. All right.

  I kissed her back if for no other reason than to spare her public humiliation, one hand on the back of her head, the other arm wrapped firmly around her. But I kept my eyes open, checking out Shock. He was watching us with a slightly sad smile that suggested he and she had already had a Conversation about this.

  Winterglass, I couldn’t read at all. Flaming-eyed owl skulls are not really known for their subtle ranges of expression.

  When I finished kissing Caryl, I kept my arm around her and looked to Winterglass.

  “I’ll have you know,” I said to him, “you just got me out of a very awkward conversation with Shiverlash.”

  “Where is the Vessel?” he asked. Oh, wow. I had never heard his natural voice before, and it was at least eight kinds of Nope. I was so disturbed by the warped, nightmarish rattle of it that it took me a minute to realize what an alarming question that was.

  “Oh,” I said. “I, uh . . . it’s gone.”

  “Gone where?” said Caryl, pulling away from me and leaping straight to about a level 8.

  “Gone . . . from existence. I got cornered at the abyss and it sort of . . . fell into the void.”

  Caryl crumpled to the sand. Winterglass stood for a moment like an extremely creepy statue, then began to advance on me.

  Brand stepped between us, bristling. Winterglass came to an abrupt halt; even when Brand had been Unseelie he’d shrugged off royal commands, since the manticore was older than the scepter itself. Winterglass had learned the hard way not to fuck with Brand, and he didn’t know I’d made him promise not to attack.

  For a long moment Winterglass said nothing at all. And I’d have lost a ton of money if I’d wagered on what his next words would be.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “I— What?”

  “You have freed me entirely from the Arcadia Project’s control,” he said. “There is now nothing left in either world that could convince me to make even the smallest agreement with any human again.”

  “Father . . . ,” Shock began. But Winterglass put up a hand, and he fell silent.

  “I won’t try to stop my son or any of my other subjects from cooperating with you. But I have my own troubles to attend to, namely the Beast Queen that you unleashed.”

  “The Arcadia Project could help you with that,” I said.

  “Oh?” His native form didn’t have eyebrows, so he had to redouble the sarcasm in his nightmarish voice. “You will send armies of humans to stop the teeming masses of Unseelie commoners who salivate waiting to rip my people limb from limb?”

  “Probably not that, no.”

  “Then there is nothing you can do to help me in the struggle I must wage, and your demands will only serve to distract me. Whatever Third Accord your Project hopes to make, you will have to make it without me.”

  I looked to Shock, to Caryl. Caryl was sitting on the sand, chewing one of her knuckles, tears in her eyes. Shock stood looking at his sneakers, resigned. Neither of them had anything much to say.

  “I’ll give you this advice for free, then,” I said. “Shiverlash will stop at nothing to see the spirits freed. The best thing you could do for yourself would be to start befriending commoners rather than doubling down on exterminating them. Talk to your son there. Actually listen to him. He can help you kick the spirit-slavery habit.”

  Winterglass turned his skull toward Shock. The kid kept his eyes on his shoes.

  “There are just too many commoners,” I said. “Every enemy you make is a new body for the siren’s army, and since she can cancel magic, it’s going to be bodies against bodies.”

  “Why are you telling me how to fight the only ally you have left in the Unseelie Court?”

  “Because I would rather that ally have been you. I love Caryl, and she loves you, and so I wanted to love you too. I still haven’t given up hope that one day you might look past your fear of change and see us as worthy allies.”

  Caryl moved to him, touched his skeletal arm with gloved fingers. So she was skittish about closed spaces, but had no trouble cuddling skeletons. Okeydokey.

  “You can’t really be leaving the Arcadia Project,” she said in a tone of hurt disbelief.

  He raised one bony hand to cup her cheek. “If you had any sense,” he said with surprising tenderness for a nightmarish demon lord, “you would too. Dame Belinda will not be gentle with you when this is all over. Come with me now, and I will keep you safe.”

  “I cannot abandon the Arcadia Project!” she said, her eyes overflowing with tears. “It is necessary for human progress. For fey progress as well! The White Rose could not have been built without it, nor your palace at Nullhorne. Without it we would all be wild creatures scrabbling for survival, never dreaming of anything more. Everything you attribute to the sidhe, as part of their innate superiority? It’s because of their relationship with us!”

  “I don’t believe that,” said Winterglass. “The sidhe have always been the best of either world. And Shiverlash is trying to destroy that. If you came with me, you could destroy her, you could rule there.”

  “I don’t care what happens to the Unseelie Court!” Caryl blurted with such vehemence that Winterglass stepped back. “I wish I had never seen the place!”

  Winterglass stood for so long that I thought maybe he really had turned into a statue this time. A monument to an Unseelie King, dead of a broken heart.

  “I’m sorry,” Caryl said. “I shouldn’t be unkind to you. It wasn’t y
our fault.”

  He reached out to touch her hair once, briefly, then let his hand fall.

  “If you must go home,” he said at last, “then I will ensure that you get there safely.”

  “No,” said Caryl resolutely, though her voice still shook a little. “I know what that means—it means you’ll enslave another spirit to hide us. I will never allow that to be done in my presence again. For any reason. Deciding there were exceptions to that rule lost me my best friend.”

  “You haven’t lost me,” said Elliott. I started. He was on my shoulder now. Not really, of course. He had no here in Arcadia. But that was what he chose to project.

  Caryl put both hands to her mouth, starting to sob in earnest. “Elliott . . . ,” she said brokenly. “I thought Unseelie couldn’t forgive.”

  “You are Unseelie,” he countered logically. “Did you not forgive me for leaving you, for making myself vulnerable to Shiverlash?”

  “I am part human,” Caryl said.

  “Then so am I, perhaps. Let me be the spell that will see you safely home.” He showed himself fluttering over to land on her shoulder, wrapping his tail around her neck, just like old times.

  “Hey,” I said. My voice was hoarse for some reason. “Can Brand and I come too? The Seelie guards are still looking for us.”

  “Can you make a spell that will hide all of us?” Caryl said to Elliott. “Even with her iron?”

  “Hmm,” said Elliott. “An interesting challenge.”

  After a few experiments, he determined that if he used Brand as the base for the spell, he could weave an enchantment that radiated outward for twenty feet or so, creating a null space that most would feel subtly compelled to look away from.

  Caryl mounted Brand behind me, wrapping her arms around my waist and leaning her head against my shoulder. Shock kissed her hand farewell.