by P. S. Power
Maybe it was prescience, or more likely Gwen was just used to thinking in terms of narrative causality, but she looked at the page for a moment and traced the area out with her finger, smearing the ink, just a tiny bit. It was red, and had failed to dry totally yet. That meant she'd stained herself in the movement, and it looked a little like she was bleeding.
"This is a big area. Nearly the size of, um, this County. Rumford. If the magic goes down inside of it, then it won't really be subject to the King's laws anymore. No military force can really fight without weapons here. Not without a lot more training. No one could stop a rebellion in that case, could they? True, it would be primitive inside, but, seriously, there's a lot you can do without magic, if you know how. Or, well, given everything, what if people are just trying to make a safe place?"
"Sorry, I don't take your meaning. How would a lack of magic be safe for anyone?"
Gwen looked at her buddy, and made a frustrated raspberry sound with her lips.
"So asks the magical super-soldier that would be left helpless inside that thing... But think, I wouldn't be, would I? I can fight, with hands and feet, with weapons and bombs, since that's fresh in everyone's mind. I'm betting there are other people that might have figured that out. It would take someone with magic to make this happen, and maybe a lot of them. But... What if they had relatives or lovers that they wanted to protect from people like Debussey? In a space like that, she might not be able to act at all." Then something occurred to her, and Gwen barely had to pause to realize it was prescient. It was strong too, and gave her a headache. "And what if, whoever is doing this is just starting here? If it could be given enough lives, it might take over the whole continent, or possibly the whole world."
Beth stopped too, and made a face.
"Crud. I can feel it. Put me in state? Prescience, please."
"Beth, would you-"
She didn't get the rest out, before the report started to come.
"One death per exponential growth, once the star is complete. One more takes the Duchy, two past that most of the land in the West. Fifteen sinks the oceans and twenty the world."
"Can you tell where the action is coming from?"
Beth stopped and stammered for a bit, and then, finally shook her head.
"No, it seems to be with us. You and me. I can't find who." She sounded a bit flat, but that was how she was in a state like this.
Gwen tried for more clarity, since that sometimes helped, but nothing really did, so finally she wrote it all down on her pad of notes and then got Beth back to normal.
"So, there's that. My guess is that we aren't far off of the next death at all. I can't probe that, and I hope that I'm wrong, but..."There was no reason to think that at all, was there? The effect had been so strong though, and waiting shouldn't make it stronger.
They both headed to bed after a while longer, since, like it or not, they were going to be on a train in the morning. Gwen felt really glad they had good walking boots with them. Hopefully that wouldn't really be needed.
She didn't speak, even as they found their little room, and got ready for bed, the lights going out, even if both of them feared what the dark held now. There was a bit of a tremble there, in the dark, for her at least. It came from within, but she knew that right there, just beyond the edge of reality, they waited. The Elder Gods. Even when there was no magic working, she could feel them. They dripped terror from their presence, like a candle did wax.
So, she lay there in the dark, not able to sleep for a long time. That meant thinking, even if it were a hugely bad idea. This whole land, in fact, their entire world, was built on magic. Everyone used it all the time, even if they had to pay for it. All real travel was done using it, and they functionally didn't have medicine. They had magical treatment procedures, some very wonderful healers, and devices that let you mend faster, which really helped a lot of people, but they didn't do nearly as much with drugs and surgery was almost unheard of at all.
If this place was plunged into the dark ages, they wouldn't know what to do at all. Even earlier that night, though a lot of people smoked, only one man had the quaint habit of using matches. No one else had anything that could start a fire and she wasn't really certain how to do that either. Something about rubbing two sticks together?
She hadn't been too worried about that before, but now it seemed like a major gap in her education, didn't it? At any moment, those survival and wilderness skills she'd never learned might be all she had. She shivered again, fear running through her, since the magic not working would lead to the deaths of millions. Maybe more than that.
What kind of evil person would set that up at all? Why?
The truth was, she didn't know and had no idea where to start looking. What Beth had said, that it seemed to be with them, somehow, probably meant that one of the people that had been on the train was responsible for it. It could be anyone too.
They just didn't know enough to be able to tell who that might be. Carter Palmer? Well, he certainly had the magical ability and intelligence. His whole life had been about radiatives though. It would be like her making a law outlawing martial arts, forever.
Eugene Hadley? Again, he'd been there, but his business was built, in part on magical things. Of course, his business in slice-o-matics, or whatever they'd been called, would go way up, if the magic all came crashing down. Probably not enough to be worth destroying the world though.
Creepy waiter guy, well, other than that he'd been around at the wrong times, she just didn't know. She had to look at her pad to even remember his name. Darling. Jonathon Darling. Worse, if the magic went away while they were working, they might be left in pretty dire straits, without warning. If the killer could be anyone, then grabbing her or Beth for the sacrifice would be a fantastic boost for the ceremony, wouldn't it? After all, the more power a person had, the better they were for things like that.
Thinking those things didn't help her sleep at all, but she did get up nice and early, to find that Beth was already up as well. That wasn't normal for her, and either showed that something was wrong, or that the woman had also spent a restless night.
Worse, they didn't know if someone had simply lied to them. It was a time honored tradition for murderers, after all.
Beth led the way to the train station, and they got there just in time to realize that no one new was getting on at all.
It was ominous, to say the least.
Horribly so.
Chapter thirteen
They didn't stop long at the next two stations, and no one got on, or off at all. It didn't speed things up, since they still had to sit there, waiting the whole time. They weren't refueling depots however, just little covered patio areas that had ticket booths. Places in little towns that didn't have a lot in them, except a train that came by once or twice a week.
They did have fruit sellers though, set up for them to purchase things. At the second place Gwen got off the train and bought a lot more than the people with them, the other passengers, would ever eat. Even giving things away to the crew it was going to be close. She just felt bad for the old guy that was selling things though. He'd looked so happy when she got off the train, at first, but then realized that it was just her, Beth and Clara, and his face fell.
So she'd gotten more than she needed. To share with everyone else.
True, one of them might be the killer, and worse, might be trying to take out all functional magic in a world that ran on the stuff, but how likely was that really? This wasn't a movie after all. In real life...
Well, thinking about it didn't make her feel any better, but it was, for the time being, her job. When it came down to it, from what she knew about things like this, magical workings on a large scale, they seemed to take a lot of people, didn't they? Ones that were present for the events too. They almost never phoned in their work from a great distance. Debussey had managed to harvest fear from around the world to try and open up the gates, but even that hadn't done very much for her
, and she still had to sacrifice other people to really make it work.
Including her own daughter, who was, after a fashion, this world's version of Gwen's little sister. One that she'd never had in her own world at all. That was because the insane psychopath that had been her real mom was, thankfully, killed by her brother. Billy.
That part of things was something that she'd never asked about. At first Gwen had figured that Billy had done it for pretty normal reasons. He'd been tortured for years, after all. Drugged and forced into complex scenarios to train him for combat. So he'd killed the woman responsible. It made a lot of sense to Gwen.
But, there had been something said once that kept coming back to her. Or at least it did now. The whole thing with the fear and horror of the gate into the voidic plane had distracted her, but Billy had said something right before she'd taken out Erin Debussey.
You shouldn't have killed her, mom.
At the time she'd been too busy to even think about it. There was a fight on, and the world itself hung in the balance. Gwen had to take the woman out, and then help close up the rift that she'd pried open. It took everything she had, and even at that, a lot of help was needed. They nearly all died doing it, with Gwen bleeding nearly to death.
For some reason she'd figured that Billy, her long lost brother, was telling Debussey that the woman shouldn't have killed her. Gwen. Or maybe their little sister. Now, thinking about it, she had to wonder. There was something off about it all. Billy had been nearly livid, but only about what he spoke of, not about her being hurt, or that little girl dying. He didn't even blink about the rest of what was going on, which had probably been brainwashed into him.
You shouldn't have killed her, mom.
That had sounded personal. Old too. Gwen was willing to bet that whatever their bio-mom had done to deserve death, Billy Cavendish had also blamed Erin Debussey for. There was a story there, but she wasn't going to ask at the moment. She couldn't for one thing. Maybe she shouldn't? Her brother wasn't the best balanced of people after all, and if he'd found some way to cope with his loss, then maybe it was enough and she should leave it alone?
It was hard to know. Gwen could also feel what was going on inside herself, and knew that she wanted to avoid the possibly rough situation that asking might cause. Now, the trick there was if she was trying to get out of it to protect Billy, which was a good reason, or just to protect herself, which was the wimpy and cowardly thing to do? Was it just picking at scabs to ask, or would it be lancing a boil? There was probably no way to know, unless she asked.
Which she pretty much had to do, didn't she?
After all, her brother, as strange and hard as he was in some ways, had saved her life. Not in a normal fashion, but in a way that was more real than most would get. When they were kids, and she was in the fourth grade, Dr. Cavendish had let her son, Billy, go to school for a very brief period of time. Probably to see if her super-soldier process could be integrated with the rest of society. In a cold and slightly evil way, it made sense. You tossed the baby into the deep water, and told it to swim or die, right? That was her way.
About a month or two into the school year, Gwen had found herself cornered and being beaten by a group of fifth graders. All boys and all probably sub-par in intelligence. Most bullies and bigots are, after all, so it wasn't a big stretch to assume those kids had been too. Big though. They all towered over her, and were giving her a nice solid beating for daring to look too different. For the crime of being crippled. They called her beast, and monster.
Until Billy got there.
He was little too, about her own size, but he didn't let that stop him, punching, kicking and using high level martial arts moves that no schoolboy should have been able to pull off. She didn't understand that at the time, but that wasn't how Billy had saved her. It was what he said in a lull, after two of the bullies were on the ground, and needing to go to the hospital.
Fight.
He told her to fight. Then, together, the other three boys were beaten hard enough that Billy was never allowed back into school and she'd been nearly expelled herself. But that single word had changed her life. She couldn't win most fights. Her left side was weak and atrophied, no matter how hard she worked, and everything on that side was collapsed in. The other side made up for it by being rough and protruding, which was a kind of balance, she figured. She was slow, and awkward. Things inside her hurt, from the hundreds of surgeries that she'd had and just the way she'd been born.
She could fight though. When they came for her, she could try to not be a victim. She could stand up for herself. More, even if she was weak, and small and crippled, on occasion, when things lined up, Gwen could win.
That was the lesson that her hero, Billy Cavendish, had taught her that one day at recess. How not to be a victim. How to stand up for herself, even if it hurt, and even if she was going to lose.
So, if he needed her to ask about his pain, then she had to do it. There was no other way. Everything she'd ever managed at all, all her martial arts training, and even walking down the street, knowing that she was going to have things thrown at her, and be called names, or even be attacked, all of that, was his doing. Without him, she might well have killed herself. It had been close, for a long time.
If that had taken place, then this entire world would be a hell dimension at that very moment. Most likely. It was what she'd been told at least.
The problem with being on the train, she realized, as she walked toward the back, carrying a large wooden crate of fruit, was that she had far too much time to think. This whole world had that problem. On her way toward the back of the sitting car, where most of them spent their days, she stopped at each person and held the box out.
"Treats, for later. Remember not to throw the peels on the floor. Littering is bad." Beth had already found their seats, the same section they'd claimed the first day, and Clara was off with her friend, Sally, who was more of an acquaintance, from the look of things. In fact, they didn't seem to know each other all that well at all.
That part had seemed a little strange to her, since they'd been at the same whore house, hadn't they? Didn't the girls at those places know everyone else pretty well? That's how it always seemed on television, which, she knew might not apply to the world here at all. For that matter it might not have really applied to her world. It wasn't like she'd ever been to a place like that. It just seemed strange, however.
Clara was clearly being taken care of by the other woman, and guided into proper social behavior, given her new position as a maid. They were even doing a decent job of that, too, finding ways to get Beth and her cleaned and even pressed clothing each day. She was almost certain that had been done by bribing some of the men to help them with it. What they were using for that she didn't know, but they hadn't asked her for any funds for it, so she kind of thought it was something else.
Maybe they'd just asked? Lending an iron wasn't that big of a deal, was it?
Of course she was having visions of Clara on all fours, taking it up the behind so that she could have wrinkle free uniforms each day. Gwen hoped that wasn't the case though. Not that there was anything wrong with sex, but it just seemed wrong to be trading for something like that. Doing it for fun, or even out of boredom, that might be all right, but not just for the sake of clean clothing.
Then, Gwen was a prude, in her own way. More than Bethany even, and way more than any prostitute would ever be.
After making the rounds, passing out bananas, which were the hands down favorite of the people on the train with them, she settled the box on the floor near Beth and moved it to the wall.
"There, that's my contribution to the economy of that place today. Other than that, I have nothing new at all. You?" Beth had been snooping, or trying to, when everyone else left to stretch their legs. They might be able to hear, but her friend shook her head softly.
"Not a single thing. Worse, everything is buzzing, which makes using either of my main powers difficult. I have
n't gone into state, but I imagine that would be headache inducing. Even the lights and the train keep surging, when we're moving. It's that null field, flickering on and off."
Gwen hadn't really noticed, since over the last few days she'd just tried to pay attention to things, and stretch a lot. That wasn't done in public here, so she had to go to her room for it every few hours. It helped, but her back was still sore from all the sitting. She badly needed to go for a run, but there was no place to do that at all. They didn't stop for long enough most of the time, and the next day would be trading trains, instead of going for recharging.
The whole trip was wearing on her, but no one was really doing anything wrong or different. Carter avoided her, but not Sally, who she was willing to bet was making some mets on the side, taking trade from the fellow. Most of the time he just read however.
Hadley did too, but that was mainly newspapers which he bought at the train stations they stopped at. Clara kept vanishing, only to show up again an hour or two later, seeming the same way as when she'd left. The only person that was interesting at all was Martin. He talked on the Telestator every time they got off the train, which reminded her that she needed to chat with Ethyl and some other people, the next time she got a chance.
Martin Cordell had news however, and moved in beside Bethany, his leg brushing hers momentarily. That was close and chummy, considering everything. Then, Beth was kind of hot. The rest of it, being a Westmorland and all that, might just fade after a while, if the man was around her enough, bigot or not. Like that senator that had fought tooth and nail against desegregation, but had turned out to have had a black lover and a daughter by her? Well, change had to start someplace, and it wasn't like Marty was a dog either. Beth didn't shy away from his touch even.