by J. M. Frey
“What . . . what is all this?” Reed asks, eyes wide as he takes in the wall of monitors, the banks of hard drives, the long desk filled with precisely organized file folders, the toy wastepaper trebuchet that Pip gifted me with. “It’s like something out of a cyberpunk book.”
“It is my office,” I say, impatient and annoyed that he has ignored my demand that he leave in order to gawk. “It is where I work.”
Ah, and now I have his full and complete attention. Reed turns to face me, eyebrows furrowed and mouth slightly ajar. He looks stunned, as if he hadn’t anticipated that I would need employment in this world. Of course I would. How is a man meant to support his family with no vocation? All men must work—even one who was made up.
I scoff at Reed’s surprise. “It’s not as if I can draw a wage from the king as Shadow Hand, nor tribute from my tenants! Here, I must buy my way, as any other citizen. And so I work. Do not look at me as if doing that which is beneath a lord’s son offends you!”
He gawps, goldfish-like and infuriating. “But what do you even do?” Reed breathes, and I can hear it in his voice, the small and subtle glee, the interest. I can all but see the wheels and cranks of his imagination creaking and clicking to life. That great mind from whence I was hatched is warming up, and just knowing that he is thinking about my life, about Hain, horrifies me.
“No,” I say. “No more stories. Leave my brother alone to live his life. He is happy, for once. Let them be.”
Reed does not pout, but a dampened mood settles over him. “Wandering the roads forever?”
“Obviously not,” I snort primly. “He is managing Lysse like a good eldest son ought, I assume, with Bevel by his side. So leave them be,” I snarl.
Reed shakes his head, clearly startled by the news. “Kintyre? Staying in one place? Being domestic?”
“More than once he expressed that he was feeling too old and tired for the wandering life. What he ran from when he was eighteen no longer frightens him. Lysse will do them both good. Leave them be.”
Shrewdly, Reed narrows his eyes. “Then tell me what you do.”
“Are you threatening me?” I snarl. “Do not think that I will acquiesce to blackmail, Elgar Reed!”
“No, no,” Reed says, hands up, placating. “That’s not what I meant, I just . . . Forsyth, you fascinate me. You have to understand that! I just want to know you.”
“I will not be your experiment,” I counter.
“I don’t want to experiment,” Reed protests. “Just talk. I just want to be let in.”
On the surface, it is not an unreasonable plea. But Reed’s mere proximity makes all the lovely Solsticetide treats I’ve consumed roil and curdle in my gut. To stand beside him feels unnatural. It itches under my skin, a prickling burn that I fear I cannot dispel without tearing off my own flesh. It would take a heroic act of intellect to become comfortable in his physical presence, and I am unconvinced, at the present, that such an act is worthwhile.
I have spent my whole life uncertain about whether or not I believed in the Writer, in the way the scholars claimed that Authorial Intent ruled our destinies, and that our lives all end in the Final Chapter. And yet here I am, standing before my maker. And he is flawed, and selfish, and rude, and so very human that I can barely stand it. This is no great, omnipotent, and kindly god. This is a man: self-important, without introspection, narcissistic, and cruel.
My hatred curls around my lungs, squeezes them tight, so that in order to speak, I must wheeze around my disgust: “And in return, you will vow never to write another word of my home world?”
“I promise,” he agrees, far too quickly for me to be able to trust his honesty. “Not another thing. No novellas, no short stories, nothing.”
He puts out his hand to shake. I fold mine behind my back.
Reed’s hand drops, a small sadness pulling his smile down, but I do not feel sorry for him. I cannot touch him. I simply cannot. I did so once, and it felt like grasping an angry electric eel. I will not grasp in friendship those hands, those fingers, which tapped me into existence on a battered old typewriter.
With words tasting of bitter almonds, I say: “I hack.”
Reed’s sadness dissolves into confusion. “Hack what?”
“Whatever the Canadian Security Information Service tells me to,” I answer with a shrug, being deliberately glib. “I learned of hacking quite early upon my arrival here, and it was easy enough to read the many volumes available regarding coding. I am a polyglot, you recall—you wrote me that way. JavaScript and C++ are just another set of languages to perfect. And it was the easiest way to set myself up with a legal identity.”
“But . . .” Reed blusters. “Computers?”
“Of course. It is not so different from the work I did as the Shadow Hand,” I sneer, raising my hands to indicate the walls covered with wires and screens, and the small bookshelf overflowing with programming books, Alis’s favourite board books, and stuffies. On the wall above my main console, Smoke has been hung on a cherry wood plaque board. “I investigate, I read, I synthesize data, and I return recommendations and command actions. And just as before, I have found a way to ingratiate myself to the governing body of this nation.”
Reed’s jolly fat cheeks drain of color. “But you’re a scholar.”
“And in this world, libraries are digital and computers are books,” I say, stunned by his lack of comprehension. I scowl. “I was no mere book-mouse,” I push. “You know that.”
Reed staggers back a step, reaching out blindly behind him and crashing into the wall, clutching at my desk chair to remain upright. “I don’t . . . I didn’t . . .” He gasps for air, sweat pearling on his forehead.
His reaction startles me. Derision, I expected, but not this shocked horror. Unless . . .
“Reed . . .” I say slowly, horrified in my own right. For how, how can a Writer create a character and not know all of their nuances? How could he have . . . put this in motion and not realized it? “You do recall that I was the Shadow Hand, do you not?”
“I . . . I do,” he mutters. “I just . . . when I set it up, it was a . . . a bit of a throwaway, really. It was such an offhand comment. I didn’t . . . I didn’t expect you to . . .”
A throwaway? The most important aspect of my life, the only part of me that I felt made me worthy, and honorable, and good, the thing of which I was proudest and which redeemed me from being, I felt, a spoilt younger son, and my creator tells me it was a throwaway? Barely remembered, hardly thought about?
Insulting! Beyond the pale!
“What I do here, it is the same!” I insist. I cannot . . . this is untenable! “This is meaningful.”
“But . . . computers,” he repeats. “I just . . . I expected more . . . I don’t know . . . bafflement?”
“I have lived in this world for nigh on two years,” I snarl. “How simple must you think me? I am no Kintyre, to bash around, and bull ahead, and understand nothing.”
“Hey now,” Reed says, rising to defend his greatest literary achievement.
“Spying is the same no matter where it happens. I can learn all I need about a target by following their social media accounts, tracking their IP, watching their online spending habits. It is identical to my old duties, only I need to send out no Shadow’s Men, write no blackmail expense slips, take no in-person meetings with the king. Here, I need not even don the Shadow’s Mask, or Cloak. Here, I need not even change out of my sleeping clothes, if I so desire,” I add with a derisive snort.
My dark amusement rubs Reed the wrong way, and his hackles rise. “But being Shadow Hand wasn’t important! It was such a secondary feature of your character that I . . .” He trails off, eyes falling to his feet, shamed and confused. “I only put the Shadow Hand in one book.”
“Secondary. Secondary?” I hiss. “After Lewko the Elder was tortured by Bootknife, you chose me for Shadow Hand because, what? It was convenient? Because I was nearby? Being the Shadow Hand of Hain was my whole life! It
was the only thing that was mine, truly mine!”
“Forsyth, I—” He swallows hard. “You’re just Kintyre’s little brother. You’re not supposed to—”
“Ah!” I snap. “And there is the crux of the problem! I am no hero, and so I cannot have a passion, have a desire to help? I am a citizen of Canada now, am I not? Do I not owe it to my kingdom to serve her best interests?”
“But it’s beneath you!” he shouts, his ire rising to match mine.
His disapproval surprises me. I expected him to understand. I don’t know why I did, because every conversation I’ve ever had with him has given me evidence enough to assume that he would not. Call it blind hope. Maybe, I thought, if I could make him understand, make him see it from my perspective, maybe we could have . . . reconciled our differences. Maybe we could have found the friendship he so clearly wants. Maybe, secretly, deep within the part of my soul that was born of his typewriter, I had wanted. . . . Ah, but it is pointless to wish for that which one cannot have. Reed will never understand how much he doesn’t know about what he has created. So instead, I gawp at him again, a protest and a sound of surprise tangling behind my larynx and coming out as a scoffing squeak of fury.
“You’re a gentleman,” Reed presses. “I only wrote you to be the Shadow Hand because I needed an excuse for Bevel Dom to learn about the Iridium Crown!”
“Well, whether you intended it or not, this is what I am! I take pleasure in it, and you shan’t take that from me!”
“I could sponsor you,” Reed says, standing upright, a plea on his face. “You’re meant to have the life of a gentleman of leisure. I have the money, especially with the TV series coming. I could—”
“Absolutely not!” I snarl, recoiling at the thought of it. “I’ll take nothing from you, especially not the gains from your stories!”
“Forsyth, be reasonable,” he wheedles. “You have a daughter. You need to provide for her. You need to raise her like a Turn.”
“And in taking employment, I do! I am her father, not you! I shall see to her welfare!”
“But I could—”
“And what would be your price?” I demand. “Access to her? Weekly dinners?”
“That’d be nice.” He hooks his thumbs into his belt loops, pleased, thinking he is winning.
And that is it. That is enough.
“You ruined my childhood,” I say, low, dangerous. “You shall not ruin hers. I have kept my part of the bargain and told you of my occupation. You will keep yours and write of Hain no more. Now leave. And if you try to return, you will find a restraining order placed against you. Trust that I hold enough power with my new government to make that happen.”
Reed pales, jowls wobbling, and reaches out to try to take my hand, or touch my shoulder, or somehow press his skin against mine and force acceptance through my flesh.
Before his hand even lands, Smoke is in mine.
To him, perhaps, it looks as if the sword has simply leapt off the wall and into my grip, but it did not. The magic I know, the spells I could once weave, the Words I could Speak, these things do not work in Pip’s realm.
No, I am simply fast.
“Forsyth!” Reed yelps, and then jiggles backward as I level Smoke’s tip at his neck. He snaps his mouth closed, wavering, eyes jumping from the point, to my hand, to my face. Fool— he should be watching my shoulder if he wants to track my intent. “No . . . no need to get violent,” Reed chatters.
“There is every need,” I said, willing my teeth to unclench. “I have requested, peacefully and repeatedly, that you do not harass my family. And now I learn that you have not only disregarded my request, but that you have stolen information through trickery. I do not even know how you knew of our party tonight. I assume spying can be added to your list of crimes.”
“It’s December twenty-first! I assumed you’d be having the. . . . Forsyth, I’m not a criminal!”
I snarl, wordless and irritated, and poke the plastic button on his cardigan-covered belly lightly and deliberately with the sword. He sucks in a breath and jiggles some more, this time shaking in fear.
“You wouldn’t,” he whispers, aiming for defiance and settling on stubborn terror.
“To protect my family? I most certainly would. And do not forget, Mr. Reed,” I hiss. “You wrote me to be extremely proficient with the Shadow’s Sword.”
He gulps, takes a step back, and then another. I steer him toward the door and let the press of the blade push him back against the wood.
“Now,” I say, affecting my Shadow’s Voice—low and deadly. “Out.”
Reed scrabbles behind him for the doorknob, and the moment he has it under his hand, he is flying down the stairs, slamming into his boots, and disappearing into the Canadian winter like a siren into the depths of the sea with a victim under her arm. I watch from the top landing of the staircase, Smoke turned behind my body so that my guests do not see it. Several have crowded around the bottom of the stairs, attracted no doubt by the shouting and Reed’s hasty exit. Among them is Pip, her mouth a sour line, her eyes narrowed in the direction of our front door.
“I’ll be down in a moment,” I call to the crowd, and they all make vague nodding motions and noises of assent, turning back to their conversations or returning to where they were before. I back into my office.
I replace Smoke on its plaque, and then return to the party. It is noticeably quieter in the house, now, but as I make my reappearance with a reassuring smile plastered firmly in place, the volume of conversation slowly bubbles upward to regular volume. I pause on the stairs to readjust my waistcoat and smooth back my hair. I also take a deep breath, schooling my face into the even, placid expression of a lordling.
Pip is still waiting for me in the foyer, and has been joined by her father. She looks grim. He, merely confused.
“Who was that?” Martin asks, looking up through the rails as I pass him on my way down. Martin is holding the bottle of wine Reed brought as a gift in one hand and Alis in the other.
I relieve him of my daughter, pull her up against my neck to inhale the safe, sweet milky smell of her. She pats my face, somehow sensing my distress, and tries to soothe me with a very soft string of “Dah dah dah dah.”
When I look back up, I meet Martin Piper’s eyes and tell him the truth.
“He was nobody important,” I say.
Rings
In Osgili, the far-flung island on the southernmost tip of the Brystal Archipelago, it is a ring. And it takes nearly a week for Solinde to locate the totem, lost as it is under the silt of a river. Even though her power can hold back the water, it cannot keep her boots from sinking in the sun-warmed muck.
When she finds the dratted thing, sweaty and matted with algae and bedevilled by biting instincts, she nearly calls down the lightning and does away with the horrible totem right there. But no, there are too many trees closing in over her head, suffocating and holding the fetid, humid air close to the ground. She must be the tallest thing in a clearing for the lightning to come to her hand. Even she cannot circumvent the laws of nature to call lightning where it is not wont to go.
There is a town nearby, and a defense tower with a spire. But that would mean humans, and Solinde carries too much hate for their kind to willingly venture into their midst just now.
No, Solinde desires silence.
With the ring pulled snug over her thumb, she walks for a full day and night to the southernmost tip of the world. She stands on the gray, reaching finger of rock that arrows out over the sea, on the promontory the sailors call the Astrolabe.
She slides the ring off her thumb and kisses its unremarkable gold curve, hoping.
And then she calls down the storm. The rain washes her hair and clothing clean. It is cool and refreshing, and if Solinde weeps with the sky, there is none but the sea to witness. The lightning, when she summons it, leaves her skin untouched, but turns the ring in her palm to ash and dust.
In the sky, four more stars flare and burn out. Sol
inde stands on the crest of the chalky cliff, waiting. She lays a hand over her heart and waits for the tug that will signal the return of that which she seeks. She waits, and yearns. She waits, and despairs. She waits, and weeps. She waits.
He does not return to her.
Her anger is the storm. Below Solinde, waves rage, flung at the stone as if to sacrifice themselves, to be free forever of Solinde’s harnessing misery.
Three
On Christmas morning, Alis is entertained with the paper which wrapped her presents, the boxes in which they came, and the sticky side of the bows, which she cannot seem to shake off her fingers. She is not so concerned with the gifts themselves. Which is a shame, as my daughter has been absolutely spoiled. Her splendid hoard of toys and books is even more abundant than I ever remember Kintyre’s being on his birthday. Of course, there is no Christmas in Hain, and any gifts given at Solsticetide are food or drink, unless given between spouses, pairs, those who are trothed, or lovers. So to be confronted with the pile of tokens gifted to my daughter by her grand- and great-grandparents, as well as our good friends, is quite startling. Pip laughs and calls it consumerist nonsense for a baby who won’t even remember, but even she is not immune to the romance of plying our daughter’s first holiday with overabundance.
Worn out by all the preparation that had gone into our Solsticetide festivities and heartily sick of the leftovers, Pip decides that our Christmas Day feast will not consist of turkey, but take-away. Pip closes her eyes and plucks one of the flyers out of the fan I present to her. Indian. That sounds good.
“Mmm, curry!” I tell Alis, who is snugged in her mother’s arms, her wee cardigan covered over with festive bows. She fusses if we try to remove them.
She says “Mmm!” back, as if she has any idea what curry is.
Then I trade Pip our daughter for the phone. “Will you please order?” I ask. Telephones still give me anxiety if I’m not mentally prepared for a conversation with a disembodied voice, and I end up stuttering more often than I like. It annoys the people on the other end, which in turn makes me more anxious, and prone to worse verbal fumbles.