by Martha Carr
“For me, yes. I’ll pour you a glass too, and you can take it or leave it.”
With a wry laugh, Cheyenne nodded. “Okay. Sounds good.”
“Wonderful. Thank you, Cheyenne.”
“For?”
This is where things always get sticky between us. Drow don’t mix well with Mom’s politics or her ambitions.
“Thank you for coming to me first. We both know you're dedicated and skilled enough to have found your answers somewhere else. I realize I’ve been sitting on this conversation for a long time, and I’m glad you felt comfortable enough to bring it up again.”
“Well, I found your name, Mom. Who else would I go to?”
“That’s my girl. See you tomorrow. Love you.”
“Love you too.” Despite everything, I love you.
Cheyenne ended the call and dropped her hand. I had to find incriminating evidence before she tells me all about it. Bianca Summerlin sure knows how to keep a secret.
Her gaze settled on the tall dresser against the far-right wall of her bedroom. She focused on the shiny copper box next to the picture of their German Shepherd, Maxine. The dog had been gone six years, yet that photo was one of the only personal things, beyond her tech and her clothes, Cheyenne had brought with her into the city from her mom’s family plot in the hills. That and the box.
Cheyenne crossed her room and stopped in front of the dresser. The copper box, cool in her hand, shimmered in the light poking through the blinds. “You only left her two things, didn’t you? Me and this box that doesn’t open.”
She turned the thing over a few times, perusing the etched symbols she’d studied for twenty-one years. She set the box back on top of her dresser and rubbed her eyes before shuffling out into the living room. She’d go to her mom’s house—Cheyenne’s childhood home—tomorrow night and have the conversation she’d wanted to have since the first time she’d asked Bianca why she didn’t have a dad.
“That still leaves me with a whole day to find answers on my own. You taught me that too, Mom. Never rely on just one source for the most accurate information.”
* * *
After inputting a few searches on the dark web and letting her torrents do the rest of the data-sifting and compiling for her, she grabbed the bag of Funyuns she’d opened last night. Food is food.
Now that Cheyenne knew she’d found something in that operations report with her mom’s name on it, she couldn’t just load her backpack and sit through two classes today. She had work to do.
Much like the one she’d sent Professor Dawley, she emailed her professors, informing them she wouldn’t be in class today, but based on the trajectory of their course for the semester, here was the work she’d already performed and provided now to show she was on track—or way ahead of it.
“This is such a waste of time.” She crammed another handful of Funyuns into her mouth. “I thought grad school was supposed to be harder, at least.”
The hard part now wouldn’t come from school on the Virginia Commonwealth University campus. No, the hard part was having patience with her searches and whatever holes they dug for her around the FRoE and this Chateau D’rahl and Inmate 4872. My dad. It has to be.
* * *
Nothing pulled up with her keywords or sub-level terms for over an hour. Although she had more to work with now, Cheyenne was antsy. She popped into the Borderlands forum to look around. Maybe a unicorn needs help with a dragon problem. She snorted. Yeah, right.
The first few topics were mundane. New Arrival Support and Guidelines and Regulations Not Outlined in the Accord. She might have gone back to look through those if every other thread turned out to be as useless first.
The next title made her stop: We Have a New D-class Resource.
It was the first time she’d seen D-class mentioned, but the D had to stand for drow. Dragon’s out of the question. I would’ve heard about one of those by now.
Cheyenne opened the forum thread and took a deep breath. “This is not good.”
Our friend HahaRadz444 had a visit from a D-class berserker last night. She helped him out with a greenskin power struggle. So far, things are looking up. Use this thread as a board for requests. If she’s looking, she’ll see them.—
The original thread post came from none other than gu@rdi@n104, which shouldn’t have surprised her. They were all watching now for sure, or looking for her at the very least.
Cheyenne pushed back in her chair and shook her head. “He made me my own bat signal. On a dark-web forum for magicals who need help with…what? Not being extorted? Oh, my God, this is not what I signed up for.”
Still, she couldn’t help poking around through all the comments addressing their new D-class Resource. Most of them just referred to her as D. Cute.
A few trolls wanted someone to sit in on their business meeting with a warren of Nightstalkers, whatever those were, to discuss Ambar’ogúl produce smuggling.
Someone else was asking for money to help them pay the bills for the next three months.
One person, whatever they were, wanted the opportunity to meet her in person because “I crossed through when I was a child and never had the chance to see one with my own eyes.”
“This is insane.” Cheyenne kept scanning requests. None of them hinted at anything on the same level as the goblin Radzu needing somebody to get orc thugs off his back and out of his store. “I’m not gonna find anything about Durg or the people going after Ember’s friends on this. They better not start sending me fan mail.”
No one knew her real name or where she lived—or that she wasn’t a D-class resource. Not the way they thought she was. These people wouldn’t expect their shiny new drow in the system to be just a halfling.
A private message from gu@rdi@n104 blinked on in the corner of her screen.
gu@rdi@n104: There’s a lot of fluff to sift through in places like this. But something might show up that’s worth your time. I’ve heard good things.
Cheyenne typed back that whatever the guy had heard, he was mistaken and should leave her alone. Then she deleted it before sending, stood, mussed the hair on the back of her head, and went to take a shower.
This was what Mom meant when she said everything has a price. I try to do a few good things to help some people out, and now I have to deal with everybody asking for everything.
What Cheyenne needed was to focus and not let herself get distracted by wondering how much this gu@rdi@n104 knew. Her data searches could do the rest. She’d gotten this far without a bulletin board for how to contract a drow berserker.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Without needing to get to class and sit through the most boring part of grad school so far—which was all of grad school—Cheyenne had the time to do her hair the way she wanted and put on the makeup she hadn’t bothered with yesterday. Pale ivory foundation everywhere. Thick black eyeliner blended into the dark gray on her lids. This forum thing with gu@rdi@n104 calling her out as some kind of drow superhero put her in a don’t-screw-with-me-mood, so she added black lipstick to go the whole mile. She saved that for special occasions and not being mistaken for a savior of every Border crossing—whatever that Border thing was—magical.
Metallica’s Master of Puppets blasted from her Bluetooth speaker. Cheyenne walked circles around her desk, pausing every few rounds to check for pings on her searches. The music drowned out that blaring duck quack whenever a notification came up, but the music helped her think and stay calm.
She took a break to clean the kitchen and wash what few dishes she had. Then she made her bed, stuck some laundry in the wash, and got out the compressed air can to spray the dust out of her computer tower and the server box and used lint-free wipes on the monitors.
When her apartment was as clean as she could stand to make it, she ended up lying on the floor in front of her desk, trying to summon even a trifling spell without seeing the changes in her skin crop up. “Just a tiny spark. Something!”
She snapped her fingers f
or what felt like the hundredth time, and a silver flash ignited between her fingers. The second it happened, her skin tingled and took on the purple-gray color of her drow heritage. “Well, at least it’s getting faster. That doesn’t help me right now.”
The last of the Funyuns went into her mouth, and then she stood to check her searches and the time. Still nothing, and it was almost 12:45 p.m. “Bergmann better have her office hours open.”
If the halfling couldn’t spend her afternoon sifting through the information her search programs hadn’t found yet, she might as well spend her time doing something useful. She rolled up off the floor, paused, then darted into her room and snatched the copper box from her dresser.
Whatever she is, the woman knows more than I do. Maybe she knows more about this too.
* * *
Professor Mattie Bergmann’s office door was wide open when Cheyenne stopped in the hall. She reached out to knock anyway, but Mattie beat her to it.
“Door’s open, Cheyenne. Just come on in.” The woman didn’t look up from her desk and whatever work had most of her attention, but her mouth quirked in a private smile. “But feel free to—”
The door clicked shut behind the drow halfling. “Shut it? Yeah, I figured.”
Finally, Mattie looked up at her student, those hazel eyes glinting. “I’m glad you came back.”
“You didn’t leave me that much to work with yesterday.”
“Well, you know what they say. It took more than one guy to raze Rome and all that.”
Cheyenne snorted. “That is what they say.”
“So.” Mattie folded her hands and thumped them on her desk. “How have things gone for you in the last twenty-four hours?”
“That’s kind of a loaded question.” Cheyenne stepped across the office toward her professor’s desk. “The whole ‘find my happy place’ thing came in handy a few times, though.”
“Good for you. I guess you just needed to know it was possible, huh?” Mattie sat back in her chair and nodded. “And you’re able to let all the drow fall away just like that, huh?”
Cheyenne squinted and fought back a laugh, running her tongue along the inside of her cheek. “I kinda redefined that happy place.”
Mattie’s eyes widened in confusion.
“I can slip into drow mode pretty much whenever I want. So far. And I broke the record I set with you yesterday.”
“Wow.” The programming professor smiled and rolled her chair back away from the desk. “By how much?”
“A long time. Hey, is there any way for me to use my magic without going full drow? You know, like if I wanted to, I don’t know, knock something out of someone’s hand without them seeing the skin and the hair and everything.”
“I don’t think so.” Mattie blinked at the ceiling in thought. “Not unless you can cast a full illusion spell.”
“Like yours.”
“Yes. Like mine.”
Cheyenne leaned toward the woman’s desk. “So you can teach me that?”
“I can, but not yet. If you haven’t perfected your ability to shift in and out of your dual forms, Cheyenne, an illusion spell will be useless to you.”
“Right. No playing the system on that one.”
Mattie chuckled. “Definitely not. It’s a build-as-you-go kinda deal.”
“Okay. How about this?” Cheyenne set the copper box on the professor’s desk with a thunk and folded her arms. “You ever seen one of these before?”
Professor Bergmann looked down at the box, licked her lips, and cocked her head with a quick jerk. “Where did you get this?”
“Someone gave it to me. Technically to my mom, I guess, but if I’d been born already, she wouldn’t have had to keep it for me.” Mattie had not taken her eyes off the box, and Cheyenne nodded at it. “You know what it is?”
“This came from your father, didn’t it?” The woman tapped a finger on her lips and frowned.
“Yeah, great guess. Care to tell me why?”
“These are drow runes.” Mattie gestured to the symbols etched into the copper and cleared her throat. “I recognize only a few, Cheyenne, but even if I knew them all, I couldn’t tell you what they mean.”
“Why not?”
“This…” The professor took a sharp breath, then met her student’s gaze. “Someone intended whatever’s inside this box for you and no one else. I’d be doing us a disservice if I tried to solve this one on your behalf.”
The halfling stared at her professor and shook her head a fraction of an inch. “What do you mean, ‘solve’ it?”
“It’s a puzzle box.” Mattie shrugged. “For lack of a better term. The drow call it something else, and I’m not important enough to have that kind of information. It’s your legacy, Cheyenne. For whatever that’s worth.”
“I’m supposed to get it open?”
“Hmm.” With a tight, regretful smile, Mattie stood and tapped the surface with her fingers. “You weren’t exaggerating when you said your mom wasn’t involved, were you?”
Cheyenne raised her eyebrows and grabbed the box again. “More like an understatement.”
“Fair enough. When it’s time for you to open that box, you’ll know what to do. Or so I’ve heard. It’s not a commonly practiced ritual anymore.”
“Neither is knocking up a high-profile research economist before disappearing and leaving her to raise a half-magical baby by herself. Probably.”
“True.” With a knowing smirk, Mattie walked around her student until she stood at the other end of the office in front of the armchairs. “I’m assuming you didn’t come here just to talk about drow artifacts most people have completely forgotten. We both have better things to do with our time, don’t we?”
Turning the copper puzzle box in her hands, the halfling nodded and set it back down. The chains on her wrists jingled when she shook out her hands again, and then she turned from the desk to face her magical mentor. “So, teach me some stuff.”
“All the stuff.” Mattie chuckled and folded her arms. “Show me how much easier it is for you to bring out the dark elf.”
Casting her mentor a sideways glance, Cheyenne stifled a smirk and closed her eyes. She opened her hands at her sides and thought about guns being pointed at anyone. Heat bloomed at the base of her spine. She counted to three as it washed up and over her, then she opened her eyes and met Mattie’s gaze.
The other woman clicked her tongue. “Very nice. You look grounded in it today. How about—”
A line of purple and black sparks erupted at Cheyenne’s fingertips, and she wiggled her fingers, letting her magic play in the electrified air around her hands.
“Okay. Show-off.”
The drow halfling grinned. “Get the jar.”
A surprised laugh burst from Professor Bergmann’s mouth, and she blinked. “What was that?”
“The jar.” Cheyenne nodded sideways toward the desk. “Bring it out. I can do it this time.”
For a few seconds, Mattie studied her student with indecisive curiosity, then reached out and twisted her fingers in a brief gesture toward the desk. “Did you do something I should know about?”
“Probably.”
The jar of pens floated off Professor Bergmann’s desk and into the center of the office. It hovered in the air between them.
Cheyenne lifted her hand and reached toward the floating container. “I don’t care about what other people should know. Just what I can do.”
Sparks flared at the tip of her outstretched index finger, lighting the room and both women’s faces with a deep violet glow. Just like dodging a bullet. That’s how it’s done.
The crackling hiss of her magic slowed to intermittent bursts. Mattie Bergmann’s heartbeat stretched on, with multiple seconds between each percussion tap in Cheyenne’s ears—at least, what felt like seconds. Cheyenne focused on the jar and sent a burst of purple and black magic toward the open rim. The light arced from her finger like water from a fountain.
With a hiss and a l
oud crack, every pen inside the jar flew out, striking the bookshelves and the walls and falling all over Mattie’s desk. Inside the glass, Cheyenne’s magic crackled with a droning buzz—purple and black lighting captured in a bottle.
“Well,” Mattie’s eyes gave off a feral light, “you get half points for that one.”
Cheyenne dropped her hand. “You never said not to take anything out of the jar.”
“You’re one of those prodigies, aren’t you?” When Cheyenne’s eyebrows flicked together in confusion, her professor laughed. “You’re right. I didn’t say what not to do. Just so we’re clear, I hope that won’t be something I have to remind you of too often.”
“What not to do?” Cheyenne stepped toward the floating jar and shrugged. “Don’t worry. My moral compass isn’t that broken.”
“Very reassuring.” Mattie snapped her fingers and, before the halfling could grasp the jar humming with drow energy, the clear glass pulled away from Cheyenne and zipped into the professor’s hand. Peering into the opening, Mattie blew into the jar like blowing out a candle, and the sparks buzzing inside snuffed out. “Did you spend any time working on returning to Cheyenne the Goth?”
Cheyenne watched her professor cross the office to put the jar back on her desk, although the woman didn’t bother to pick up the pens scattered all over the place. “That part’s not as fun.”
“I wasn’t joking.” When Mattie turned around, amusement glinted in her eyes, but it was curtailed by a seriousness Cheyenne hadn’t seen in her before. “I’m pleased to see you appreciating where you come from and what you can do. That’s important.”
“There’s a but, isn’t there?” The halfling pressed her lips together and leaned against the bookshelf, folding her arms.
“That surprises you?”
“No, it’s just annoying.”
Mattie rubbed her hands together as she paced her office. “In some ways, we’re all a little annoyed about being here, but it’s way better than where we came from. Most of the time. But all of us on this side, Cheyenne, do whatever it takes to live our lives within the parameters we’re given. Everything after that is up to us. Just like it’s your responsibility to get a handle not only on using your drow magic but on putting it away when it doesn’t serve you. Believe me, there will be times when it won’t serve you.”