by Alyc Helms
“I don’t care if it’s meant to qualify you for the consort tax credit. You are not–”
“Mo-ther!”
“You are her mother?” The Lady’s soft question broke through our moment of family drama, reminding me that for all her seeming friendliness, she was an uncertain ally. We weren’t out of the woods yet. In more ways than one.
“You couldn’t tell by the way she ignores my very reasonable concerns?”
I paid no heed to Mei Shen’s disgusted huff and eyeroll, nor did the Lady.
“Yes. I understand that the relationships between mothers and daughters can be… fraught.” The Lady touched long, segmented fingers to Mei Shen’s brow, ignoring the hiss and shadow smoke that rose from the contact. “I had perhaps thought to keep you. You would be much use against the Voidlands. But as you are blood, you are free to leave with your mother.” Her smile was like the glimmer of darkness between stars. And oddly indulgent. “You and your handsome consort.”
“Don’t encourage them,” I muttered under my breath.
“Thank you,” Mei Shen said loudly, as though the vindication made up for the implicit threat that the Lady had been intending on keeping them.
“If I may, Lady,” Tsung said, brow furrowed. “You indicated you are working to contain the Voidlands?”
“In the Shadow Dragon’s absence, someone must. And I do not like the methods the Conclave employs, nor the price they hope to exact.”
Mei Shen and Tsung exchanged a look that left me feeling very much the third wheel. This was the secret Mei Shen had been loath to share with me.
“We share similar goals, and I hope our methods are more palatable than the Conclave’s,” Mei Shen said. “Perhaps you don’t need to hold us to secure our assistance. Will you show us?”
* * *
Showing us, as it turned out, required a gathering of what seemed like half the camp – gargoyles, spiky goblinoids, a few of the manta-like kraben, and a dozen other denizens of Shadow that I had neither name nor description for. They armed themselves with a variety of equally mismatched artifacts from my world. Several of the goblins carried trash that looked to have been liberated from a construction site – bent rebar, nail-studded boards, coils of razor wire. A pair of ambulatory octopodes wielded a Louisville Slugger between then, passing it from tentacle to tentacle as they rolled along. The Lady’s army was nothing like the organized, faceless regiments of the Conclave knights.
The Lady led us through a narrow passage bored out of one of the skyscraper trees. “It is not often that the Conclave sends scouts this far, nor that creatures of the Voidlands escape its pull, but I prefer to prepare for both eventualities.”
Cheering thought, that.
We marched, a few dozen strong, toward the ever-present absence that was the Voidlands. It felt like walking down a steep hill, even though the ground was level. I ignored the pull in favor of gently interrogating our guide.
“You said the Shadow Dragon had been the one to hold back the Voidlands,” I said to the Lady, frowning at Mei Shen. At least she had the grace to duck her head, and her luminous scales seemed to tint slightly pinker. “I thought he was holding back the Conclave.”
The Lady moved gracefully around trees and through brambles that had the rest of us, even her own people, struggling. “He was a check on all powers at the borders. The fulcrum that held them in balance, if you will. He was not particularly well liked for it. If not for him, I would have destroyed the Conclave decades ago, before they were this much of a nuisance. But I do not think any of us fully appreciated his… service.”
Just as well. If Lung Di knew he was missed, even grudgingly, he’d be insufferable.
“I am trying to revitalize his wards,” Mei Shen said. “But I do not have his power.”
“Nobody does, child. The Shadow Dragon is a Leviathan, and it took more than one such to contain the heart of the Void. But you know that, do you not? Being of that bloodline? I do what I can to ward against the encroachment of the Voidlands; the Conclave tries to siphon them and shape them into something they can control. Others do their part, knowingly and unknowingly. It is not enough. Ah. Here we are.”
We emerged from the trees and stood at the edge of a dead zone. Some of the trees had fallen over into the encroaching curtain of darkness. Others had bark turned ashen and desiccated where it faced the leading edge of the Voidlands. Some of the largest, oldest, trees still stood tall, bisected by that same edge. I wondered if they would fall before they were engulfed.
The black fungus from the carbuncle covered almost every surface. The air stank of fresh asphalt burning in the sun.
In a space between two of the fallen trees, a headless white figure faced the void, swaying. Blue-bright stars eerily illuminated the lace and tulle of her gown, and a knot of blood-red light pulsed at the center of her chest.
“Estelle?” I gaped at the sight of the goff bride Shimizu and I had made.
“Who?” Tsung said.
“I… nothing.” I turned to the Lady. “That’s why you wanted her?”
“A simulacrum crafted by a shadow mage is a powerful artifact. And this one triply so for the form she takes and the name you used to shape her.”
Right. Because brides and ghosts were both liminal, border creatures. Apparently ghost brides were even better. And ghost brides named after stars… I’d hit the trifecta of symbolism without even intending to.
“But how is she lit up?” I picked up the end of the Christmas light cord, which trailed along the ground behind the ghost bride.
“By me. You may have named her, but I am giving her life.”
Wait. Life?
The swaying I’d written off as the effect of a breeze became a full-fledged turn. The headless figure raised an empty sleeve and dipped into an awkward curtsy.
I shrieked, cast the plug away from me like it was a snake, and leapt back.
Mei Shen caught me. I think she might have been stifling giggles.
“Shut up,” I grumbled, collecting myself and pulling away from her overheated scales before I burned myself again. Brat.
The Lady led us along the narrow no-man’s land between trees and void’s edge, from waypoint to waypoint – a pachinko machine, a fiber-optic Christmas tree, a glowing inflatable bunny the size of an elephant.
“And all of these draw their power from you?” Tsung asked when we stopped at a cabinet aquarium that had to be over two hundred gallons. It was filled with luminous anemones and iridescent cichlids whose scales glowed almost as brightly as Mei Shen’s in the UV of the tank’s lights. “How are you still standing?”
The Lady shrugged, as though it was nothing of note, but I noticed our escort shifting, choking up on their weapons. The ambulatory octopodes squeezed together until they looked like one creature with too many tentacles. “I am no leviathan, but I manage. It would be easier with assistance.”
“Then why have you not allied with the Conclave?” Tsung pressed. “Whatever your differences, surely this is–”
“Those men,” the Lady spat. “They know nothing of danger, nor of obligation. They were only ever freed of that prison because of my goodwill, and the first chance they had, they turned against me because they fear women. They fear me. They have done all they can to overthrow me ever since.”
I might not have made the connection if I hadn’t spent the morning on an Alcatraz tour and the afternoon trying to escape it. “Wait. Three men. About… fifty years ago?”
The Lady nodded, shoving through the undergrowth with more force than needed. One struggling sapling creaked, groaned, and fell slowly into the squelchy cushion of the fungus surrounding it. “Even so. One had a touch of Shadow upon him. The other two were brothers of my bloodline, greatly removed. Three ingrates. Three fools. I will let the Voidlands end them before I join with them. And if you are foolish enough to seek them out, I will have naught to do with you.”
I pressed my lips hard together. It wouldn’t do to laugh in th
e face of such fury. I fell back and braced myself against the tarry trunk of a fallen tree. More of the scorched-asphalt smelling fungus covered it. Even the spongy slick surface and the stink couldn’t dampen my amusement. I released it under the guise of a coughing fit.
“Mother?” Mei Shen’s hand hovered above my back, a comforting heat. She exchanged a worried glance with Tsung. I waved away their concerns and regretted it when my waving sent a waft of eau de burned rubber in my direction.
“It’s fine. I’m fine. I just… I think I know the identities of the Conclave.”
* * *
I explained as we trailed the Lady back to her camp, about Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers, John and Clarence. About the years they spent digging with spoons through the porous stone at the back of their cells, of the raft made of rubber-backed coats – or was it? Kraben skin had that same rubbery quality – and the nighttime escape. I told them about the disappearance, the presumed death, the conspiracy theories and reported sightings over the years. The Mythbusters episode.
“Seriously, Tsung. You’ve never seen Escape from Alcatraz?” I muttered.
Mei Shen, at least, could be forgiven for her lack of pop culture knowledge. “It makes no sense. They could have gone anywhere, and they went back to the place they escaped?” she asked.
I shrugged. “It closed less than a year after their escape. Wonder if they had something to do with that. Or maybe they just took advantage of it.”
“And the chance to assert control over what once controlled them?” Tsung mused. “Men have done stupider things for similar reasons.”
I gave Tsung a long, searching look. He flinched and looked away before I could read more than my own biases and suspicions in his expression.
I stopped trying when Mei Shen dug a burning elbow into my side. “Ow. Okay. So, Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers go back to their thieving ways. This time, it’s tech from Argent – gonna go out on a limb and say they used that proprietary energy technology to get the lighthouse up and running.”
“And they are using that to siphon off bits of the Voidlands to make their knights,” Mei Shen murmured.
It made a horrible kind of sense. The Conclave knights weren’t like any other Shadow denizen I’d encountered. They were solid. They bled. They could cross over to our world on their own. “The knights go back long before Lung Di abandoned his wards, but given what you saw in the cell block at Alcatraz, I can believe the Conclave has stepped up production.”
We came to a fallen tree at least two stories tall and covered with black fungus. Our conversation stumbled to a halt while we waited for the Lady’s gargoyles to carry us over it – even Mei Shen, though she could have flown herself. But that would have lit the entire forest up with her light, and we’d already drawn enough attention.
“What about this new master the Lady mentioned?” Tsung asked, more to Mei Shen than myself. “We hadn’t heard anything about that.”
“Guess we could, y’know, ask,” I said. We were approaching the ring of trees that sheltered the Lady’s camp. A crowd of residents who had been left behind scurried out to greet our return. I pushed forward toward the Lady, sidestepping a goblin, ducking under a kraben wing, hopping a few trailing tentacles from the ambulatory octopodes. “Pardon, Lady. We didn’t mean to upset you with… our…” My apology dribbled to a stop as I saw the creature leading the welcoming committee. “T-Templeton?”
“Hi, Missy!” And then the rat astonished me even more, splaying out his paws before the Lady and burying his nose in the mulch in something very like a bow. The gems set in the leather gauntlet fastened around his front leg caught the light from Mei Shen’s scales.
The Lady knelt and set a proprietary hand on his flank, looking up at me. “You know my lieutenant. I hope you will not challenge me over him?”
Challenge her? “Er. No. Templeton is free to do what he wants.”
The Lady stood. “You are an odd creature.” She glared down at Templeton. “And you were instructed to stay and observe.”
“I have news,” Templeton said. It was strange to see him being so solemn. But his solemnity broke when he looked up at me, all sparkling eyes and ratty grin. “I’m a spy, Missy. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you before.”
“S’okay,” I said faintly. Of all things, I hadn’t expected to see Templeton here. And I certainly hadn’t expected him to be a double agent for the Lady. Maybe I should have challenged her for him. He was going to get himself hurt. Or worse. “Spies have to keep secrets.”
“And share their news,” said the Lady. “Inside. To shield us from hunting eyes.” She made her way through the passage, and we all squeezed after her. The motley guard scattered once we’d reached the safety of the warded clearing, but the Lady didn’t stop until she reached the yurt at the center of her camp and motioned us all to enter.
The inside of the Lady’s home was like no place I’d ever seen in the Shadow Realms. It was warmly lit with a hodgepodge of lamps and lanterns – paper and colored glass and cut tin. It was cozy. There was color. Granted, mostly dark jewel tones. It came from a collection of junk that would make any thrift-store hoarder drool with envy. A full suit of dented, tarnished armor listed against a taxidermied bear with patchy brown fur and dusty glass eyes. A brass samovar filled with peacock feathers permanently depressed the jagged keys of a folding harpsichord. The photo that she’d made off with of younger me with my missing tooth and my spotless gi was propped up on the scratched lid. Threadbare carpets covered the ground, the central one picking out the gruesome slaughter of a unicorn by a pack of hounds. The vermillion of the hounds’ blood and the silver-gold of the unicorn’s seemed to float a breath above the carpet, so vivid were they in comparison to the other, muted colors of the weft and weave.
The Lady sat in a high-backed chair that was rendered more thronelike by her presence. “Report,” she told Templeton, who had settled in a hunch of ratty obeisance at her feet.
Templeton hadn’t quite gotten the knack of serving two mistresses at once. He worried his tail between his paws and looked back at me. “He knows you were there. He knows who you are. He has your scent. You left your backpack.”
I glanced at Mei Shen and Tsung, but they looked as mystified as I felt. I suffered a twinge of panic that Templeton meant that someone else had guessed the connection between Missy and Mr Mystic, but there was nothing in my bag to lead to that connection. Even Jack’s number on my phone was coded and went to a burner. “Who?”
The Lady responded for Templeton. “The Conclave’s new master. He has been hunting, and now he has found you. I suppose it was inevitable. You should remain here. It will be safer.”
Safer from what? “Who is this master? Who’s hunting me?” Until today, the Conclave had left Mr Mystic alone, and they didn’t know about Missy at all.
“The great cat. The shadow cat.” She tilted her head. “Though I suppose it can be said that all cats belong partly to the Shadow Realms and partly to Alam al-Jinn.”
A shadow cat? Or… no. The shadow cat.
The cat. I only knew of one feline who had it in for me. Lao Hu.
“Tiger,” I muttered.
I was so fucked.
Eleven
Worst Laid Plans
After a quick breakdown of what had been in my backpack, Mei Shen and Tsung agreed that it would be suicidal for me to return home. We could hope that Lao Hu had no great knowledge of how the real world worked, but Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers did, at least well enough to plan successful raids against Argent in cities across the world. If they were helping Lao Hu, he’d have my home address, most of my friends and former flops, the Dragon’s Pearl and Dojo d’Cho. Anything related to Missy Masters was a danger. I didn’t even dare bring Jack into it. Friends don’t let friends get on the bad side of the chthonic expression of feline cunning and caprice.
“You could come with us. David and I can keep you safe,” Mei Shen said, worrying my hand between hers. It no
longer burned. With the Lady’s help, we’d crossed over into the real world. My daughter looked like a normal young woman again.
Young woman. I was going to have to force myself to get used to that as a concept.
My prediction had been correct on our location. The Lady’s camp stood in the heart of Muir Woods, only a few hundred yards from the visitors’ center. The redwoods seemed puny in comparison to their Shadow Realms counterparts, but the fresh scent of sun-warmed bark and broken evergreen needles was welcome. Mist still sat in the hollows and low places, despite the day pushing past morning. We’d gone all night in the Shadow Realms, between walking the length of the bay, our capture, and our time touring the Lady’s wards.
We stood at the parking lot dropoff, saying our goodbyes next to the town car that Tsung had called using the lone payphone. I smoothed Mei Shen’s hair. “I suspect I’m safest in the Lady’s camp. I’m more worried about you and Tsung. What are you going to do?”
“Sleep?” Mei Shen huffed softly. “Continue to work on my uncle’s wards. After seeing how the Lady’s wards work, I wonder if I’m going about it all wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“That slimy black stuff that was growing on everything? She’s using it to gather energy from the Shadow Realms itself. She isn’t powering the wards. The Shadow Realms are.”
Well, that couldn’t be sustainable. It was already decimating the forest. “We are not covering San Francisco in black mold,” I said. I was putting my foot down on that as a Bad Idea.
Mei Shen giggled, and I couldn’t help but join her. We were well past sleep-deprived city and heading toward loopyville. “It would solve the housing crisis and the whole tech-bro problem. No more families being evicted out of Chinatown,” she said.
“No. Black. Mold. I expect Tsung and I will be in agreement for once.”