Esther cut him off again. “Don’t be dumb,” she said. “Aelia was obviously talking about two different people. Nero and Aelia have been lying to us. But we don’t know why. It’s just as likely it’s for a good reason as a bad one.”
“I can’t believe you guys.” Sloane slapped the floor with her palm. “These people kidnapped us from another dimension. They’re holding us hostage until we fight their bad guy. And you’re having trouble believing they would lie to us? Why—because they said please and thank you?”
“Always with the drama.” Esther rolled her eyes. “All I’m doing is trying not to freak out; I’m not campaigning for them to get the Nobel Prize.”
Matt was toying with the string that kept his siphon tight to his hand, turning it around and around his fingertip. “Even if Aelia did lie and it was for some insidious reason,” he said, “what are we supposed to do about it? Our only path home is still through her.”
He wasn’t wrong, Sloane thought. No matter what Aelia was hiding, no matter what was really going on with Genetrix and Earth, wouldn’t they still do whatever they had to to get home? The thought of spending the rest of her life here, surrounded by taffeta and the clink of siphon plates, made her feel suffocated. This was not her planet. Not her life.
Even if she had nothing but heartache waiting for her back on Earth—moving out of the apartment she shared with Matt, grieving over Albie, navigating the scrutiny of the media—at least that life belonged to her. But she couldn’t forget the strange relief of hearing Aelia make her misstep, of finally having a name for what she had been feeling since she pulled herself out of the Chicago River: She was being lied to. And Sloane hated lies unless she was the one telling them. “I’ll get proof,” Sloane said. “And I’ll confront her with it. She won’t be able to lie to me then.”
“I can talk to Cyrielle,” Matt offered. “Just casually, not an interrogation.”
Sloane recognized that as the peace offering it was and gave him a small smile.
“Nothing like a casual conversation about dead Chosen Ones over dinner,” Esther said.
“Cyrielle, huh?” Sloane said. She meant to tease him, but it came out sounding flat, almost accusatory.
“Something else you’d like to ask?” he said quietly.
Sloane felt that awful swelling inside her—in her throat, in her chest, in her stomach—that meant she might burst into tears. She put her hands on the door frame behind her and pushed herself to her feet. “No,” she said once she was steadier. “I’m gonna go. Tired.”
It was obviously a lie. But Matt, in his infinite courtesy, let her tell it.
EXCERPT FROM
The Mammoth Treasury of Unrealist Poetry, Volume 2
Le Quoi
by Artificielle
What is it?
Is it
IS it?
What is
is
Is itwhatit is
I
S
I
S
IT!
what
28
THE WEEKS THAT FOLLOWED brought Sloane boredom and frustration. The doctor had told her not to train with siphons for two weeks at least, so no one bothered her about practicing. She wasn’t supposed to walk without crutches, and the crutches hurt her armpits, so she spent most of her time in one place, reading The Manifestation of Impossible Wants. That place was a small bench down the hall from Nero’s workshop.
Few people approached the doors. Even fewer made it through them, and those who did were always escorted by Nero himself. It was as if the magic keeping the door secure responded only to him.
That was why she had chosen his office as her target instead of Aelia’s. The praetor had at least granted Nero and Cyrielle access to her space. Nero had granted access to no one, which meant he was protecting something important.
At first, Sloane tried to think of an excuse for Nero to let her in. But Nero himself had become more elusive in the days since their conversation in Aelia’s office. He had asked her why she liked to read on that bench the first day he saw her there, and she had gestured to the window across from it, which had a view of the Sears Tower. After that, he took another route to his workshop so he didn’t have to walk past her.
It took two weeks for Sloane to hear it. She had gotten up when she saw Nero approaching the workshop doors and rushed forward—as much as she could, anyway—to engage him in conversation. But he’d pretended not to see her and slipped into the workshop just as she was close enough to speak to him. She watched as the heavy double doors closed and then—the shift of a deadbolt.
She had been assuming that Nero secured his office through some kind of working on the threshold. But what if his magic was applied only to the lock?
After that, Sloane begged some money from Cyrielle and went to a nearby hardware store—wearing a new brace that she didn’t need to use her crutches with—to buy a hammer and a screwdriver.
“I can’t believe I agreed to this,” Esther said.
“Don’t act like I dragged you here,” Sloane said, pointing at her with the screwdriver. It had a royal-blue handle and the brand name SIPHONA TECHNICA stamped in gold along the side. Sloane hooked a finger around Esther’s watchband and brought the watch face closer so she could see the time. “All right, let’s go. But remember our story if Nero’s there?”
“Your leg siphon thing is emitting a high-pitched noise and we need him to have a look at it,” Esther said. “You know he’s not going to buy that, though, right? We could have just gone to Cyrielle.”
“He’s not going to be there anyway. I’ve been watching his ins and outs for two weeks, and he never stays past five.”
“You’re such a creep.”
Sloane smiled with all teeth and shoved the stairwell door open with her shoulder.
Together she and Esther walked down the wide, windowed hallway that led to Nero’s workshop. They passed the bench where Sloane had spent so much time reading and a monochromatic pink sculpture that reminded her of a kidney. The double doors of Nero’s office looked like they belonged in a castle rather than in the Camel, with huge pins in the old, rusty hinges. Lucky for her and Esther.
“Just tell me if anyone’s coming,” she said to Esther, crouching awkwardly in front of the lowest of the three hinges. She stuck the end of the screwdriver up against the bottom of the hinge pin and hit it with the hammer, forcing the pin up. Once it stuck out above the hinge, she wiggled it free. One down, two to go.
“So the magic on the door doesn’t prevent this?” Esther said. “That seems like a major oversight.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Sloane moved on to the second hinge. “But all he does with magic is secure the lock—the working slides the deadbolt in place and holds it there. The magic isn’t acting on the door itself, because if it were, why would Nero bother with a mechanical lock at all? It would be unnecessary. They rely on magic for everything here.”
“And you thought of this . . . how?”
“I read the newspaper. You wouldn’t believe how many robberies happen in this city just because people rely on magic security and forget that practical measures sometimes undo it—they’ve totally lost touch with how simple things work.” Sloane finished the third hinge and stuck the flat head of the screwdriver between hinge and wall to wiggle the door out of place.
The magical deadbolt held, so the door dangled oddly from that one point like a loose tooth clinging to its last tender ligament.
“Success,” she said. She turned sideways and slipped into the office.
“If we get stuck on Genetrix for some reason,” Esther said, “you should consider a career as a criminal.”
“I’ll take it under advisement. Hurry, somebody’s gonna notice this door pretty quickly.” She turned to look at Nero’s workshop for the first time. It was a large space with pale, moody light coming in from a ceiling that was structured like a greenhouse, a geometry of translucent white panels let
ting in daylight. The walls were covered in decorative stone friezes, making the room look like an ancient temple with holy symbols all around it. But the place itself was cluttered with books and equipment, bits of old siphons and the tools to fix them, texts in multiple languages lying open or stacked on top of each other.
Esther took something out of her pocket. It was a whistle, about the length of one of her fingers. Sloane had seen people on the street and in the lobby of the Camel with them between their teeth, puffing away as they did more complex workings.
Esther stuck the whistle between her lips and blew a long, low note. Nothing happened, so she tried again, her eyes closing and her brow furrowing as she focused her intent. Faint light pricked at the corner of Sloane’s eyes, and Esther lunged at a nearby stack of books for a slim black journal hidden in the pile. She flipped to the glowing page and read aloud:
The Chosen One describes his unique perception of magic as fine strings of light, like threads in a loom, connecting people to each other, to objects, and to the ground. It is that last piece that most interests me—the magic that penetrates the earth must delve deeper than dirt; it must be connected to something in the heart of our planet, something we cannot yet comprehend . . . perhaps something broken apart by the missile fired into Tenebris Gorge, which would account for the promulgation of what we call magic throughout Genetrix.
“Nero’s journal?” Esther stopped reading and asked.
“Looks like he’s got a few,” Sloane said, gesturing to a thin whisper of light in a stack near Esther. She wandered through the workshop looking at the books Nero had left open for any other glimmers she could find. Advanced Siphon Repair, volume 3. Spine, Chest, Gut: A Study of the Lesser Used Siphons. String Theory for the Magical Mind. She ran her fingers over the pages as she hobbled to the edge of the room. There she found a small alcove almost like a window seat, but instead of a cushion, as she’d expected, there was a table.
Esther started reading again.
Thus far I have been able to view other universes, but I have not attempted to act upon them. It is more important at this stage to find a viable universe within which to work. There are a few parameters: the presence of at least some magic, for one thing; no language barrier, for another; a point of departure within the last fifty or so years, to improve the subject’s ability to adapt to Genetrix; and a champion or so-called Chosen One that is capable of completing the task at hand. It is incomprehensibly difficult to find a world that will suit . . .
She trailed off.
The table stood before a window with small, diamond-shaped panes. Through them, Sloane could see only the blurred shapes of the city turning black and blue as the sun set. There were a few small objects on the windowsill: a pocket watch with a broken chain, a small pair of pink spectacles, a ring with a purple stone. Beneath the spectacles—which were cat-eye-shaped—was a paper crane. Sloane pinched the beak between her thumb and forefinger and held it up to the light. It was as precisely folded as one of Albie’s.
“Wait, I’ve got something else,” Esther said.
I have spent days sorting through coalescing clouds of matter that have not yet formed Earth; molten worlds too toxic to sustain life; gaseous worlds embroiled in constant storms. I have seen Earths riven in two by massive asteroids, Earths overrun with feathered dinosaurs, Earths saturated with oceans. And I have even seen Earths that are barren from onslaughts of atomic bombs, Earths emptied of human life by some sort of plague—the houses still intact, the morning’s breakfast rotten on the table.
Esther moved to another journal, this one red, the size of her palm.
My champion is dead. He was killed by the Resurrectionist last night, at a quarter past midnight, on the beach along the lakefront path. The victim of the Resurrectionist’s favorite method of killing, the antithesis of the magical breath, a kind of magical collapsing . . .
The paper crane Sloane held was made out of notebook paper, wide-ruled. In the ridge of the crane’s back, she saw a scribble of pink, like someone had tested a pen. After glancing over at Esther—now flipping through the red journal frantically in search of another glowing page—Sloane tugged the ends of the crane to unmake the origami.
The paper had been used to test all sorts of pens, she discovered. But they were in bright colors, shimmering, neon, milky. The kind Albie had used, even after the rest of them teased him for it. But Sloane hadn’t seen anything like them on Genetrix. People here used elaborate, old-fashioned instruments—feather quills, fountain pens, metal styluses retrofitted with ballpoints.
“Essy,” Sloane said.
Esther’s voice rang out: “ ‘The second of my champions is dead.’ Oh my God, Sloane.”
Sloane and Esther locked eyes across the room.
“The second,” Esther said.
“Isn’t that supposed to be us?” Sloane said, forgetting the notebook paper in her hand for a moment. “Genetrix’s Chosen One was first, and then they brought us here . . . right?”
“So the story goes,” Esther replied, a distant look in her eyes.
“Keep going,” Sloane said.
My search will continue—must continue—until a suitable candidate presents itself. I will scour the endless worlds for a lifetime if I need to . . .
“That lying sack of shit,” Sloane said.
“How many were there?” Esther stared at Sloane. “Dozens? Hundreds? If they didn’t survive, how the hell are we supposed to? We barely beat our Dark One, and that was on a world that didn’t know magic—” She choked and fell silent.
“If he’s lying about this, he could be lying about a lot of other things,” Sloane said. “How hard it is to send us home, for one thing.” She crossed the room and put her hands on Esther’s shoulders. “Don’t freak out. Not yet, anyway.”
“What’s that?” Esther was looking at the paper crumpled between Sloane’s hand and her shoulder.
“It was a paper crane,” Sloane said. “It reminded me of—”
“Oh.” Something like pity softened Esther’s eyes, and Sloane pulled away.
“We got what we came for,” Sloane said, “now let’s go, before Nero—”
“I’m afraid it’s a bit too late for that,” Nero said. He tapped the lock that held the door in place with a finger, and the door fell to the ground with a loud bang.
Sloane, acting on instinct, brandished the sheet of notebook paper in Nero’s general direction. All three of them—Nero, Esther, and Sloane—just stared at the page she was holding like a sword until she put it down.
For just a moment, as Nero stomped on the fallen door, his teeth gritted, his blond hair spilling into his eyes, Sloane saw someone to be afraid of. But then he brushed off his gray sweater with both hands, flicked his hair out of his face, and again become mildness personified.
“I am not sure what I did to provoke suspicion profound enough for you to break into my workshop,” Nero said evenly.
Sloane had a sudden, desperate desire to find whatever sensitive place she had just discovered in him and dig in as hard as she could.
“Well, there was the whole ‘kidnapping-three-people-from-a-parallel-dimension’ thing,” Sloane said. “But most recently, it was Aelia referring to the Chosen One as alternately ‘she’ and ‘he’ in the span of one conversation.”
“Ah.” Nero ran his fingers over the door handle. “I told her you noticed that. She didn’t listen.”
“We came here for proof,” Sloane said. “So unless your diaries are your first attempt at novel-writing—not great, by the way—”
“How many were there?” The question was sudden, and shrill. Esther lurched toward him, looking like she might strangle him. “How many Chosen Ones did you rip from their dimensions to fight your goddamned Dark One?”
“The only reason you weren’t told is I didn’t want to alarm you,” Nero said. “Any of you. Not when you didn’t know magic, not—”
“I take it these are really valuable books,” Sloane said,
picking up one of the journals and holding it open by the spine as if preparing to rip it in half.
“In fact—”
Sloane jerked the two halves of the journal apart, tearing it down the binding.
“There’s no need to be—”
“I don’t know, I kind of feel the need,” Sloane said. “Considering you didn’t mention that we’re, what, tenth in line to fight your little death match for you?”
“You,” Nero said, suddenly quiet, “are fifth.”
“Fifth?” Esther shrieked.
“We summoned others because we did not want to summon inexperienced, barely competent magic-users to fight the Resurrectionist,” Nero said, raising his voice. He clenched his siphon hand into a fist and sparks danced over the metal plates. “We mined universes with successful Chosen Ones who were also capable magic-users. All of them fell to the Resurrectionist. All for the sake of Earth and Genetrix. Finally we couldn’t stand the losses anymore. We decided that a personal stake in the fight might compensate for a lack of magic experience. So we took you. Yes. Ten years of battles, and finally we took you.”
He scowled down at his hand as if it were disobeying him. The sparks faded.
“Did it seriously never occur to you that you didn’t need a Chosen One at all?” Sloane said.
“You act like others have not attempted to take him down,” Nero said. “For every Chosen One we have had, at least ten ordinary men and women have died trying to kill him, and that does not, by the way, include all the thousands of people who have died in the Drains.”
Esther’s cheeks shone with tears.
“I kept it from you because it is alarming . . . and demoralizing,” Nero said, quiet again. “Because I didn’t want any of you to feel defeated before you even made an attempt. I knew that you, Sloane, in particular, were still fragile, incapable of accessing your magic reliably, and then you were taken by the Resurrectionist, and—”
Chosen Ones Page 26