The Song of the Orphans

by Daniel Price

  —

  Mia’s portal opened two blocks north of the square, on a half-mile patch of sidewalk that ran east to west along Temperance Street. She was only halfway through when Carrie pushed past her and bolted toward the library.

  “Careful!” Mia yelled.

  “He’s this way!”

  “These portal edges are sharp. You could have hurt yourself!”

  Carrie hooked around the corner, then disappeared down a filthy passageway.

  Frowning, Mia closed the portal and chased after her. The alley was four feet wide at the very most, and didn’t lead anywhere but a junk-filled alcove. Stan Bloom must have been desperate or delirious to bring Carrie this way. From the messy trail of blood on the pavement, Mia could only guess it was both.

  Carrie turned around in the alcove. “Hurry!”

  “I’m coming. I—”

  Mia stopped short when a dragonette dropped down behind Carrie. The thing was so fast, it might as well have teleported there.

  “Carrie!”

  The girl only had time to twist halfway around before a short black nozzle popped out of the dragonette’s shell. It spun toward her in blurry haste, then belched a bright blue geyser of flame.

  “No!”

  Everything inside Mia came to a screeching halt: her breath, her heart, her muscles, her mind. Even the outside world seemed to fall into still frame as she locked her screaming eyes on the magfire. The flame glimmered like crystal in the light of the undersky, an exquisite bouquet of sapphires and opals. Mia had enough time to think that Heath, that insatiable nut for all things blue, would have loved it.

  After another staccato barrage of thoughts, it occurred to Mia that nothing was happening. The flame had yet to reach Carrie. It wasn’t even . . .

  “What?”

  It wasn’t moving at all. None of it. The drone, the fire, the girl in its path. They all dawdled like stone in Mia’s vision.

  She looked up and saw a winged tempic locked in motionless combat with another dragonette. Beyond them, two distant figures floated impossibly above the ruins of the clock tower. Everything in the village had come to a stop except for Mia. How was that even . . . ?

  The silence was broken by footsteps behind her—the slow, clopping patter of loafers on concrete.

  Oh, no. No . . .

  “Hello, Mia.”

  Trembling, she turned around. He stood on the sidewalk of Temperance Street: the Australian boy who was actually neither, the demon who had broken her heart.

  Semerjean stuffed his hands in his pockets and smiled glibly at Mia. “I suppose we should talk.”

  FORTY-NINE

  There was a stubborn part of her mind that still called him David.

  Even now, as her fingers clenched and her inner self screamed with fury, a dizzy little piece of herself remained lost in denial. It clapped its hands with childish glee, welcoming him home as if everything that had happened over the last thirty hours was just a big misunderstanding. Oh, David. I knew you’d never betray us. I’m so glad you’re back.

  But there was no mistake about the son of a bitch in front of her. He was Semerjean Pelletier. He’d been lying nonstop from the day they met.

  Mia took a moment to process his new look, all the tiny bits of David he’d washed away like stage makeup. His long blond hair was now a short caramel brown. His teenage facial scruff, that fine sheen of fuzz that never quite grew or went away, had been shaved. He’d swapped his modest, rumpled, “can’t be bothered to care” clothes for a sharp red oxford and khakis. Most jarring of all, he sported all ten of his fingers again. His maimed right hand had been completely healed.

  Though Semerjean looked at least eight years older (and twice as handsome, Mia grudgingly noted), there was something viscerally repugnant about him, a hard new tightness in his mouth and jaw that vaguely reminded her of someone. Mia was too rattled at the moment to figure out who.

  Semerjean’s eyes hovered gravely around the blood on her shirt. “We’ve had better weekends, haven’t we?”

  “We?”

  “Despite what you think—”

  “You don’t want to know what I think.”

  “—I haven’t enjoyed a minute of this.”

  “Fuck you.” Mia stepped forward, her brown eyes burning with rage. “Fuck you and your whole fucking family, you goddamn lying shitfuck!”

  Semerjean blinked at her. “Wow. Mia . . .”

  “Don’t. Don’t you dare say my name. You don’t get to say my name, y-you . . .”

  Try as she might, she couldn’t hold back her tears. The events of the day had left her utterly demolished. She’d been chained up and terrorized, watched a soldier and two Gothams die right in front of her. She had no idea if the people she loved were alive or dead, any of them. Even Carrie—

  Carrie!

  Panicked, Mia turned around to check on her. Though the dragonette’s flame had yet to reach her, thank God, it looked slightly larger than it did a minute ago. Time hadn’t stopped. It had just slowed to a crawl.

  Mia’s stomach tightened. She shot a wary look at Semerjean. “You shifted us.”

  “And then some.”

  She finally noticed his accent, a slightly alien version of a cultured British twang. “Is that how you really talk?”

  “In English, yes.” He smiled softly. “I was raised in the theater. My mentors were very strict about—”

  “I don’t care.” Mia surveyed her surroundings. “Why isn’t everything blue and cold?”

  Semerjean showed her his left hand. A two-inch disc of silver had been firmly affixed to the back.

  “Stabilizer,” he said. “I wanted you to be comfortable.”

  “Comfortable.” She gestured at Carrie. “Can I move her?”

  “You’re shifted at a thousand times her temporal velocity. I wouldn’t advise it.”

  “We can’t just leave her like that.”

  “We?”

  Mia squinted at him suspiciously. His expression had turned a few degrees cooler. His smile had become a little smug.

  “I can move her with tempis,” he said. “Or shield her. Or teleport her. Or I can simply destroy that metal monstrosity. There are a dozen ways to save her. I can even save her father, if you wish.”

  “If I wish?”

  “I’m offering you a quid pro quo. You come with me for a couple of minutes, listen to what I have to say. As soon as we’re done, we’ll come back here and I’ll save the lives of both Blooms. ‘Easy peasy,’ as Hannah would say.”

  Mia bristled at his casual mention of Hannah. He invoked her name as if they were still chummy, as if he hadn’t betrayed her love and good nature.

  “Where would you take me?” she asked him.

  “Just around the village. I have some matters to attend to. We’ll talk while I work.”

  “Work,” Mia repeated. “You mean ‘kill people.’”

  Semerjean plucked a piece of lint from his shirtsleeve. “I have three names on my list. No one you’d know or particularly care about. I also have some people to save.”

  “Anyone I care about?”

  “Pretty much everyone you care about.”

  “Jesus.” She closed her eyes and turned away from him. “Why are you doing this?”

  Semerjean sighed impatiently. “Mia, in eighteen minutes and forty-nine seconds, that magnesium fire will singe Carrie’s skin. In nineteen minutes, she’ll be in indescribable agony. In twenty minutes, she’ll be dead.”

  “No! Please! Look, just save her and I’ll come with you!”

  “Come with me and I’ll save her,” Semerjean countered. “My work is quick. We’ll be back with minutes to spare.”

  “Goddamn it.” Mia bounced her anxious gaze between Carrie and the dragonette, then tossed her hands up in surrender. “Okay, fine.
Fine!”

  “Lovely.”

  With a graceful wave, Semerjean created a twelve-foot disc of solid white energy beneath him. Mia thought it was tempis until it lifted him a foot off the ground.

  He extended his hand. “Shall we?”

  Mia climbed aboard without touching him, then stood as far away as she could. “Go.”

  They floated away from Temperance Street, as calm and graceful as a cloud. While Semerjean steered with subtle hand gestures, Mia stood to his side and examined him. There it was again, that familiar tightness in his jaw. She knew exactly who it reminded her of now.

  “Gingold,” she muttered before she could stop herself.

  Semerjean looked at her over his shoulder. “What?”

  “Nothing.” Mia hugged herself, her skin crawling with revulsion. “Just say what you have to say.”

  —

  The first minute passed without a word being spoken. Semerjean seemed perfectly content to fly a leisurely path around the underland while Mia looked down at the suspended action. The battle had spread well beyond the village square, with Gothams fighting Integrity on nearly every street. Four different intersections had been overtaken by tempic domes. Mia could feel the portals inside all of them. The travelers and tempics were working together to set up evacuation stations, for all the good it did. Dragonettes were already beginning to melt three of the domes with their solic cannons.

  Semerjean stood at the edge of his flying platform, his blue eyes fixed on the dragonettes. Every time he got within forty feet of one, he thrust a long tempic arm through the wall of his temporal bubble and touched the hull three times with his “finger.” Tap, tap, tap. If his dainty touch had any effect on the drones, Mia couldn’t see it. As far as she knew, he was playing his own weird version of freeze tag.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  Semerjean smirked at her. “She speaks at last.”

  “You’re the one who wanted to do the talking.”

  “I was hoping to have a dialogue.”

  “Fine. We’re dialoguing. What the hell are you doing?”

  He tagged another dragonette. “Can’t speak for you, but I’m not a fan of these flying death turtles.”

  “You’re destroying them.”

  “Thoroughly.”

  “They don’t look destroyed.”

  “Patience, my dear.”

  “Fuck you. Don’t patronize me.” Mia watched a tendril retract into his skin. “All this time, you’ve been a tempic and a swifter.”

  Semerjean smiled immodestly. “And a turner. And a traveler. And a thermic. And a solic.”

  “And a traitor.”

  His humor faded. “A traitor works against his people. I was always on your side.”

  “You lied to us.”

  “I kept you and the others alive.”

  “Yeah, poorly.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “All those times we could have used another tempic,” Mia said. “Or a traveler. Or an augur!”

  Semerjean frowned at her. “I never said I was an augur.”

  “What?”

  “As for my other talents, I used them all the time to help you.”

  “When?”

  He reached out with a split tempic projection and tagged two dragonettes at once. “Last year, when Zack fell off that hotel balcony. You remember that?”

  “Yeah. Amanda saved him.”

  Semerjean laughed. “She was an amateur at her talent. She didn’t have a prayer of catching him. The moment the tempis came out of her hand, I took control of it and rescued him properly.”

  He saw a trio of drones in the sky above Freak Street and flew the platform toward them. “That same day, Hannah took a blow to the head. Her concussion would have killed her if I hadn’t intervened.”

  “How?”

  “I reversed her back to perfect health while the rest of you were sleeping.”

  Mia pinched her lip in thought, her eyes darting busily around the platform. She could vaguely remember David insisting that he stay in Hannah’s room that night. Something about the bed being more comfortable.

  “I also healed you,” Semerjean told her. “When Rebel shot you in the chest.”

  “That was Zack!”

  “It was me. Zack couldn’t reverse a baby deer without killing it. So I manipulated his temporis. Cell by cell, I made sure that you were healed the right way, without permanent side effects. Are you starting to see now?”

  He tapped the three dragonettes, then made a sharp left turn. “I had to work night and day to keep you Silvers alive. You could have made it easier.”

  Mia crossed her arms and looked away. “You only saved us because you need us.”

  “Yes, but you don’t know why.”

  “Of course I do. You want us to make babies with the Gothams.”

  “That’s the what. I’m talking about the why.”

  He lowered the platform to street level, near the scene of a brutal skirmish. Five turners and a tempic were locked in combat with a soldier and two dragonettes. By all appearances, the Gothams were winning. The turners had aged the drones, clouding each and every one of their camera lenses, while the tempic made short work of the soldier.

  Semerjean touched each dragonette, then waved his hand at one of the turners.

  Mia did a double-take. “Wait. Did you just do something to that guy?”

  “Yes. I just ended his life.”

  Mia studied the victim, a bald and burly man she’d seen around the village. Like the dragonettes, he seemed no worse for the wear.

  “That’s Frank Godden,” Semerjean explained. “One of the three people on my list.”

  “What did he do to you?”

  “Personally? Nothing.”

  “So why are you killing him?”

  Semerjean exhaled in Godden’s direction. “In a few days’ time, he would have taken Alma Rubinek’s seat on the elder council. His particular brand of idiocy would have created unpleasant consequences for you and your friends. He was a storm cloud on the horizon. Now he’s not.”

  “How do you know all that?” Mia asked. “I thought you weren’t an augur.”

  “My wife and son see the strings just fine.”

  Hot blood rushed to Mia’s face. For a moment, she wondered if she’d gone mad. The Pelletiers were fighting to save Mia and her friends from future problems, but they hadn’t lifted a finger to stop this invasion. Nothing added up. Not a goddamn thing.

  Semerjean turned the platform and flew it west toward the ruins of Guild Street.

  “Speaking of augurs,” he said, “I believe Theo needs our help.”

  Mia glanced over her shoulder at Frank Godden. He seemed a few inches shorter than he did a second ago. It took Mia a full moment to realize that the man wasn’t shrinking, he was sinking. The concrete was swallowing him inch by inch.

  Mia looked at Semerjean in horror. Now she knew exactly what he was doing to the drones and the human targets.

  He’s dropping them, she thought. He’s a dropper too.

  —

  “Prepare yourself. This might be a little unsettling.”

  His words trickled like water around the edges of Mia’s consciousness. She was barely listening. Her eyes and thoughts remained hopelessly stuck on Frank Godden. She didn’t even notice when Semerjean thrust his hand and sprayed a cone of black mortis at the tempics’ guild hall. It spread like a shadow across the southern face of the building, dissolving it brick by brick.

  By the time Mia turned around, the mortis was gone, along with an entire wall of the structure.

  “What just happened? What did you do?”

  Semerjean smiled coyly. “Made an entrance for us.”

  He maneuvered the platform inside the building, w
here a violent struggle had taken place. The foyer looked like it had been torn apart by bazookas. Nearly half the second floor had come crashing down on the first. The entry was little more than rubble and burning wood.

  Mia noticed a nearby fire and was immediately transfixed. At a thousandth-speed, the flame danced in a hypnotic rhythm, like aquatic weeds swaying in the tides.

  She snapped out of her trance and looked at Semerjean. “How much time do we have?”

  He shrugged with droll humor. “I don’t know. I gave away my wristwatch.”

  “If Carrie dies—”

  “Calm down. We still have fifteen minutes.”

  Six spindly tempic arms emerged from the edge of his flying disc. They stretched across the foyer, moving heavy pieces of wreckage to one side while smothering the occasional flame. Mia swallowed the urge to ask him what he was doing. She was sick of the question. Sick of his games.

  “How old are you really?” Mia asked.

  Semerjean kept his eyes on his work. “Depends how you mean it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Time’s a lot more flexible where I come from. We can live a year in a day, spend a month in the God’s Eye, jump back through the strings and relive a past decade. Our experiential age isn’t tied to a calendar. Only the vainest among us try to put a number on it.”

  He stared down at his smooth hands. “If you want to know my physical age, that’s easier. I’m just a month shy of seventeen.”

  Mia stared at him, dumbfounded. “How is that possible?”

  “Reversal’s come a long way in my era. We can keep all our memories, shed years from our age without losing a moment of experience. Our bodies aren’t trapped in chronological degression. We can be as young or old as we want to be.”

  “God.” Mia shook her head in astonishment. “You could live forever that way.”

  Semerjean chuckled. “You’d think so, but no.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nature is stubborn,” he said. “It doesn’t much like the idea of immortality. So it gave us a new disease, one that only affects the exceptionally long-lived.”

  “What is it?”

  “There’s no name for it in English. The closest translation would be ‘terminus.’”