Quor quirked a smile. “Bear with me, Chet. Why do you need to know?”
“Because... because the past is impacting my current life. My current body.” She’d been leading him on.
Quor spread her hands. “Obviously, I can’t tell you who you were. Only you can answer that question. Eat your toast. I should go out and do some errands, then I’ll need to sleep. You are to stay in bed. Bathroom’s through that door. If you feel cold, there’s clothing in the closet on the upper level, and I have male clothing almost your size. I like a longer inseam and narrower waist, personally, but the fit will be close enough for practical purposes.”
“Thank you,” he muttered, annoyed. Why had she led him on if she hadn’t intended to answer his questions? It was almost as frustrating as if she hadn’t said anything, letting him stew forever in his ignorance.
“I’ll be back in a bit.”
He lay flat in bed as she left the apartment. Was it true? Had he been a reincarnating Magician before Foex died? That would explain an awful lot in his life. His psychological block from wanting to become a god affiliate, for one thing. Next to Foex all the other gods did seem pale and measly. Aureate had been drawn into Foex’s service out of passion, at first, anyway. Had Chet felt the same?
He remembered that moment when he’d accused Aureate of being an affiliate turncoat. “Who are you?” she’d asked, her voice strained. She’d gazed at him as if she’d wanted to drill him open and see what was inside. He’d run on instinct when flirting with Aureate, and everything had been so easy with her. Maybe they’d known each other in the past. In the dream, Chet had remembered killing girls who’d been his colleagues born in female form. Like Aureate had been.
If that’s true, I was, um, sacrificed in female form, too. Chet blinked, his world tilting in a way that had nothing to do with the apartment around him.
This was crazy.
His brain churned on regardless. Being a looper would explain his obsession with the past. Chet blinked. He could see his bookcases in his mind’s eye, the titles laid out before him. More than half of his collection had been penned by Magicians. He’d never noticed the sheer numbers before, the oddly high percentage.
Then there was the Raptus.
“It should not have called upon any but god affiliates,” Journey had said in the prostitute’s van.“I cannot believe that the makers of this object would wish to endow it upon random, unaffiliated people.”
Chet was unaffiliated now, but if he were a looping soul, then the past had its fingerprints all over him. Perhaps... he was reaching now, but perhaps the Raptus had recognized him as a Magician, one of its correct guardians. Maybe the Raptus even knew him. Personally. The idea was delightful and frightening beyond belief. Did Chet know the Raptus?
Chet closed his eyes. He obsessively recalled every detail of his dream. The smells, the sounds. The other man had talked about shaping a ninth prong. The Raptus had twelve spikes—like the twelve fingers of a god—only it was shaped like a doedicu’s tail. The spikes on a doedicu’s tail, he recalled suddenly, were often translated as prongs in the ancient tongue of Door. Maybe he and the other man had been in the process of creating the Raptus? It seemed too big a stretch, yet Chet had been traveling with the Raptus for a week. Had his subconscious mind had chosen that memory on purpose?
Who had that other man been anyway? The other Magician, rather. Chet thought he’d seemed familiar...
He sat up in bed, stunned.
The other man seemed familiar because he was familiar. It was Fenimore LaDaven. Only not Fenimore: he’d had a different face and body, a different name. Like Chet. It was obvious... yet not so.
Chet settled down again, frowning. There was a definitive lack of solid evidence, for one thing. How could he prove it? Reincarnation had no physical proof to draw on. Yet beneath Fenimore’s mannerisms was the same energy. He was the same person as the Magician in Chet’s drea—no, his memory.
Fenimore had been a Magician, too. That explained Fenimore’s role in the binding, at least. The Raptus may have recognized him, too.
If it were true, did Fenimore know? Chet nibbled his lip, thinking about Fenimore’s words, his silences. He had the same silences as Knife only laid out in a different pattern. Fenimore had tried to grab the Raptus back at the dig site. He’d acted as if he’d owned it. Hadn’t Fenimore said something about Foex in the barn? About how Foex prevented them from being women? It made sense, given Aureate’s story.
For the sake of argument, I'd say he knows.
If that was true, it followed that Fenimore had long-term plans for the Raptus. A magical relic that could control humanity... Chet could see Fenimore enjoying that kind of power.
How long had those plans been laid? It was a good bet that back in 7305, Fenimore had been seeking the Raptus for himself, not his prince. Chet considered Knife’s version of the story. It still felt wrong, but it was the only information he had, far more complete than Fen’s account in the ambulance. Fenimore and Knife had split up in Eich Che, taking different paths. Chet decided that it wasn’t a coincidence that Fenimore had found the Raptus and Knife hadn’t.
Pantheon, Fen wanted the Raptus so badly. The physical evidence said that Fenimore had dove into lucid mud—into the unknown future—holding it in his hands. He’d held on so hard that the graduate students had had to tie a rope to his legs to pull him from the dust.
Fenimore has the Raptus even now, this very moment. He also has Journey and Knife, Chet thought wildly.
Wait. Something wasn’t quite adding up. It was like looking down at a half-finished jigsaw puzzle to try and see the picture without the missing pieces. Did Fenimore have Journey and Knife? “I don’t know why Journey is waiting,” Fenimore had said on the train. She was holding back both her blood and verse—for a reason? Chet knew Journey and Knife were currently unaware of Fenimore’s heightened control of the Raptus. Abyss, he'd been there. But had they always been ignorant of his actions and intentions?
No.
Oh, Pantheon, it all added up. Knife had been keeping an eye on Fenimore since day one. Chet remembered Journey whispering in Clementina’s house about how “he” was Knife’s meat. It was so simple. Journey had called Knife in not just because of the Raptus—she clearly hadn't known the Shadow Dancers were keeping an eye on things until she reached the site—but because of Fenimore. Knife had been called in to handle a very old problem indeed: the double-faced courtier who had craved the Raptus beyond rational thought and reason.
But things hadn’t gone according to plan, had they? After becoming bound by the cords, Knife had switched up her game. She’d made noises about destroying the Raptus, sure, but she’d also offered the incentive of unlocking it. Luring Fen along.
To what? Who was trapping whom?
Did Knife and Journey know Fen was a reincarnating Magician, too? Um. Chet found himself going cross eyed at the possibility. The Flame had treated Fenimore with a careful respect as they’d watched him, nothing more. It was likely Knife considered Fenimore a greedy, entitled, immoral loose cannon, exactly the way she’d described him earlier. The Flame were not Syche affiliates, and they could not read minds. The only reason Chet suspected Fenimore was because of his dream.
In the end, it didn’t matter what Journey and Knife’s intentions had been. Fenimore had sat on that dock with two weeping Flame and had somehow gotten the upper hand on them using the Raptus. Maybe. The last two verses, the last drops of blood, were the only things locking the Raptus. They were headed for Allistair at this minute to retrieve Knife’s verse.
Shit, shit, shit. He had to get there. He had to get there now.
Chet threw his feet over the edge of the bed tried to stand up, immediately collapsing. He was weak, his body wrung out. It wasn’t just his body—Chet’s head swam. One step at a time, he thought, breathing deep. Just like the motorboat. Clothing was upstairs. He stood again, bracing himself against the wall and walked slowly on shaky feet to the staircase. It w
as such a modern apartment that the stairs appeared to float in the air, connected underneath somehow. There was no railing. Chet eyed the stairs, nauseated and nervous. What if he lost his balance?
He turned around and sat on a riser, then lifted himself to the next stair backwards. Scooting up the steps like a child.
A child... he remembered the face of the young girl he’d slaughtered like an animal. He’d told Fenimore that he was tired of killing children. Chet swallowed nausea. Magicians had practiced blood magic for millennia; it was what they were notorious for.
I murdered children, he thought. Lots and lots of children. Little girls, mostly.
Chet crawled back down the stairs as fast as he could. He could see a bedpan on the floor beside the bed. His whole world had narrowed to that single goal. Reaching it, he vomited his guts out. Then he sank, head resting on the floorboards, moaning.
If only Rory could see me now, he thought. He’d been a god affiliate after all. A murderous, horrific god affiliate. What would she say if she knew? Rory would probably never accept him with good reason.
There was so much blood on his hands... no, wait. Was there blood on his hands? Chet had never hurt anyone in his life. He was completely innocent, just a graduate student with a rich family. That’s right. Except he didn’t believe it. The Raptus had called him out, hadn’t it? The Flame, while discrete with their circular reasoning, had done the same. How could anyone live with this kind of legacy? Chet had wallowed in history, but history, it seemed, was full of nasty surprises.
I will be paying for this for the rest of my life, Chet thought grimly. What could possibly balance his terrible deeds? Growing up, he’d been surrounded by family members who either enjoyed breaking the law for the purpose of making money, or who’d despised this mindset and turned to a higher calling. His sisters had become Nuns for more than just legal and financial independence from their father’s dealings. Chet, too, had always identified with a higher calling, as his finely honed conscience wouldn’t have had it any other way.
So he wasn’t a normal guy, the same guy he’d always been. Chet was worse. A murderer of children, and another Magician was about to unlock a powerful magical tool to help him do—what? Kill more people, Chet was afraid.
He was too sick and weak—with both remorse and illness—to do much about it.
Chapter 24
Taking the Upper Hand
It took over an hour, but Chet got dressed, visited the bathroom and descended the stairs to the ground level. How was he going to get to the train station? He had no money on him. How was he to buy a ticket?
The front door opened and Quor strode through. She was wearing a knit cap in proxy of a wig. She still wore her scrubs and cradled paper grocery bags, a newspaper tucked under her arm. “Abyss, what are you doing?”
“Journey and Knife are in terrible danger. I’ve got to...”
“You’re going back to bed,” she said firmly, putting the bags down on a counter. “Come on, I’ll help you upstairs.”
“You don’t understand.” To his horror, he started weeping again. Fenimore was right, he was a pansy. Chet swiped his eyes angrily, sniffing.
Instead of forcing him up the stairs, she pulled out a chair and gestured him into it. “Tell me what you think is going on while I put away groceries, okay? I want the whole story. Front to back.”
Chet was incredibly grateful for the chair. The story had started at the lucid mud dig site when Professor Tibbets had introduced him to Journey. So much had happened since then. Trying not to feel daunted by his own experiences, Chet cleared his throat and began. Doyen Quor was an appreciative audience. She scowled at the discovery of Tibbet’s body and smiled wryly at his dunking in the doedicu lake. He had a feeling she already had most of the facts; it was his opinions and understanding she was looking for. Though he attempted to conceal the sex stuff, he had a feeling Quor saw right past him.
“You know," she said, “you really ought to go get tested.”
“Tested?”
“For VDs. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve caught something. For the sake of any potential partner you might have—apart from Flame—go see a doctor pronto. Okay, Chet?”
“Yeah. Fine.” His face was hot enough to melt tar, and she looked away as if preserving his privacy. It helped him continue with his tale, anyway.
He got to the part where Aureate had left to take a piss... and halted. He literally could not continue. It wasn’t a Raptus thing—the fog seemed to be fading for some reason—but he couldn’t speak.
Quor put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Knife told me you tried to rescue her.”
“Yes.” He closed his eyes. “I can still feel... oh, Pantheon.”
“Aureate and I have rarely gotten along, but I’m sorry that she’s dead. Such a waste of a good body. She was pushed, wasn’t she?”
“I think... I think I know who did it, too. Maybe.”
Quor lifted an eyebrow. “Pray continue.”
He found to his relief that he could explain what had happened on the train. Fenimore’s words and actions were just as gut wrenching after the fact. The mind-control fog seemed irrelevant now. Why was the Raptus’s power over him reduced and diluted? Chet didn’t know, but he guessed it had something to do with distance. He could still feel the Raptus—and the others through the cords—though the connection was quite stretchy. He certainly wasn’t in physical pain. Through the connection, he could tell the Raptus was several hundred miles away, and the distance was growing greater with each passing minute.
No one in the old days had been able to travel seventy miles an hour as people did on modern trains. Chet and the others had started this trip wondering what effect modern technology would have on the Raptus. It seemed this was one of them.
Chet finished his story, saying, “So you see, Journey and Knife are all that remains between Fenimore and the unlocked Raptus. This is just a theory, but I believe Fenimore was a Magician, too.” He explained his dream in more detail.
“I... suppose that might be possible. LaDaven seemed a little jittery while he was here. Didn’t say much.”
Fenimore had hardly been speaking at all, Chet realized with a start. For a guy with such high energy, he’d been surprisingly quiet. Patient. “I know I need another day in bed, but I don’t want more people to die for the Raptus. Especially not my friends.”
“Mmm, but Knife knows all this, too. This is Knife’s forte.”
“Yeah, I figured out that Knife was called in to look after Fenimore. Though I wonder why Knife didn’t just kill him outright.” Chet shot her a covert look.
Quor blinked. “You look awfully innocent, Chet, but you aren’t, are you?”
“I used to be. Last week, say.”
“Huh. Knife likes to get the lay of the land before acting, and the Raptus caught you all long before she was done with her assessment. None of us know how to deal with that. Hopefully the Shadow Dancers will come through.”
Come through with what? And what would he do if they didn’t? Chet chewed on his inner cheek. “If Knife can’t destroy the Raptus, why have we been unlocking it, anyway? I wasn’t there for that part.”
“Apart from keeping LaDaven occupied—which is Knife's game, no one else’s—we’re trying to make it easier to destroy the Raptus. For a goddess, Aiena is kind of ornery, you know? She won’t do anything unless the abysmal thing is gift wrapped.”
“But didn’t Aiena have you lock it in the first place?”
“She did, but that doesn’t mean she can unlock it on her own. You have to understand, Foex and his Magicians left tens of thousands of items when they died. Aiena was overwhelmed. It took her a decade to even triage the mess and two centuries for a decent sorting. The process is still going on, really. Aiena has been forced to work for decades to get rid of things that Foex could have destroyed in seconds not because she’s less powerful but because she didn’t make them herself. Different energy and methods, you see. We—the Flame C
ouncil—took on the Raptus as a favor. We didn’t want to hold it ourselves, though, as reincarnation doesn’t allow one to hold onto material items. Also, we were very clear that if it did anything wacky, to use modern parlance, it would go right back on Aiena’s plate.”
“That’s what it’s doing now.”
“You got it. We’re not in the business of getting Aiena’s attention, though. It might be a fatal error for us to try. Like I said, she’s prickly.”
“So remind me again why Journey and Knife aren’t in deep trouble?” Chet was vividly reminded of the old fable of the farmer, the peteino feed, the peteinos and the inofe. Trying to keep everyone from eating one another was a problem.
She snorted. “Didn’t say they weren’t. But Aiena was very careful in setting the ritual when we locked the Raptus. Fenimore LaDaven cannot possibly control Knife and Journey in direct ways, though he might be influencing them in little ways if he’s found a loophole, and I don’t doubt there is one. Aiena tried hard to close all the loopholes, but the nature of Foex’s magic was based on very specific wordings. Anyway, it’s my belief that Knife and Journey are going to Allistair of their own free will.”
“So... he’s got to trick them before he can actually do anything.” Could Fenimore trick Journey? Maybe. She didn’t like him and was unlikely to turn her back. Could he trick Knife? Probably not.
Quor smiled at him. “Come on, back to bed with you.”
“I do need to get to Allistair soon, though,” he mumbled sleepily as she helped him up the stairs. The cords were tightening in a slow, subtle way, pulling him west. “I wish... I wish I had something to counteract the Raptus’s influence. I’ll just have to sneak up on Fenimore and hope he isn’t paying attention.”
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