Floor 3, said a pleasant female voice I recognized as that of the Athenaeum, repository of all the knowledge of mankind. Apparently the woman took on side jobs. Maybe she made recordings for all the Neutralities. I wondered how much that paid.
The door slid open, and there was another mass exodus. I clung tenaciously to my post near the control panel and therefore near the door. What I did not want was to be stuck at the back of the elevator when we reached my floor. More people pushed past to get on, not as many as before—well, with luck, the deeper we got, the fewer people would want to continue down.
Another ding, and Floor 2. More shoving. Someone else stepped on my foot, and I yelled, “Watch it!”
“Sorry,” a sheepish female voice said, and the doors slid shut. My heart was beating so fast I was sure everyone around me could hear it, the smell was starting to make me feel sick, and my foot throbbed. I still had no idea what I was supposed to do. Judy was gone, I was alone…I closed my eyes and cursed my weakness. Now was not the time to go all weepy. If Malcolm needed me, I couldn’t be weak.
Floor 1.
I shoved my way out through the men and women trying to enter the elevator, or tried to—the pressure of so many bodies kept me locked in place. In desperation, I shouted, “Come on, people, were you all born in a barn or something? Stand back and let us out first and then you can stampede wherever you want!”
It stilled the crowd long enough for me to slip past and stand, gasping for breath, just outside the elevator door. I was in another corridor illuminated by fluorescent bulbs, cold and clammy and smelling of damp concrete. People flowed past me in both directions, and it wasn’t until the elevator door closed and most of the people who’d gotten off with me had walked away that I realized I didn’t know where to go next. “Wait, please!” I shouted, running after them. Two women stopped and turned around. “The Damerel rites,” I said. “Where do I go?”
“I don’t know,” one woman said.
“I think you follow the red line,” the other said, pointing at the floor. Sure enough, there were three painted lines, one red, one yellow, and one green like a time-elapsed stoplight. “That should at least get you to someone who can give you better directions.”
“Thanks,” I said, and bolted off along my painted guide.
17
After only a few strides I was sure she’d directed me wrong. The red line led me a merry chase through halls and rooms where I startled the occupants, sometimes leaving its green and yellow companions, sometimes paralleling other colors like lilac and cyan. But I had no other guide to follow, and by that time I was feeling manic and confused, unable to remember why I’d come—but it was the oracle that had sent me, wasn’t it? That was why I’d come. That, and to help Malcolm.
I turned a corner and found myself in a long hall identical to the one outside the elevator. I stopped and bent over to catch my breath, cursing the unknown woman who’d “helped” me. I was going to need a guide dog and a Sherpa to find my way out of this place.
I lifted my head. At the far end of the hall, a small group of people was standing outside a door, apparently chatting. I recognized Lucia immediately, and then my heart leaped at the sight of Malcolm, standing next to her. “Wait!” I shouted, and ran toward them, pushing myself harder than before because my fuddled brain was certain if I didn’t catch them immediately, they would vanish, and I’d be lost in this maze of twisty passages forever.
The people all turned to look at me with varying expressions of interest. Lucia wore a look of disgust, as if I’d done something vulgar like burping in public. Malcolm’s expression looked completely indifferent except for his eyes, which were blazing a warning. Two strangers, an old man and a young woman, regarded me with the kind of attention you’d give a strange dog—wary, but prepared to be charmed. And—gulp—Timothy Ragsdale, member of the Board of Neutralities, looked puzzled at my appearance. Well, I probably looked like a madwoman; my hair had to be falling down after all that time in the elevator, and I had a feeling my skirt had rotated back to front from the running I’d done.
“What do you want, Davies?” Lucia said. “You have no business here.” Her expression said clear as day that I needed to get out, right now, and not be a total idiot.
“The oracle sent me,” I said, which startled all of them, even Malcolm, whose mouth fell open a little in surprise.
“The oracle?” Ragsdale said. In his black suit, he looked like a prosperous banker, and the look on his face was pure incredulity. “You’re not permitted an augury on your own behalf, Ms. Davies.”
“It wasn’t an augury. It has other ways of communication. It clearly wanted me to be here.”
“Helena,” Malcolm said. His voice was a warning.
“I’m not lying, Malcolm. Every augury today had your name on it. It wanted me to be here.”
“I see,” said Ragsdale. “And why is that?” He looked curious now, like he’d asked me a riddle he hoped I could answer.
I looked at Malcolm. I could practically hear him begging me to walk away. To say nothing, and let him go through that door. And knowing that told me, finally, why I was there.
I turned to face Ragsdale. “Because I love Malcolm,” I said, “and if he dies today, I’m not going to grieve in silence.”
Ragsdale’s puzzlement deepened for just a moment. Then my words registered. A look of intense fury crossed his face so swiftly I almost thought I imagined it. Beside me, Malcolm closed his eyes and let out a long, thin stream of breath. Lucia swore viciously. “Did you know about this?” Ragsdale demanded of her.
Lucia eyed me. “This is the first I’ve heard of it,” she said, and I relaxed a little, because I really didn’t want Lucia getting in trouble for turning a blind eye to my relationship.
“How long has this been going on?” Ragsdale said.
“Eight months,” I replied, though my mouth was dry and my heart continued to beat like a timpani.
“Eight months?” Ragsdale sputtered. “You’ve been in violation of—you were—during the Conference?”
“Yes, sir. Malcolm and I have been together for eight months, and I was in love with him before that.” Saying it was getting easier, since I hadn’t been struck dead immediately. It was probably a mistake to think that was a good thing.
Ragsdale’s lips thinned with anger. “Arrest her,” he told Lucia. “Immediately.”
“Excuse me,” the strange man said, “but this young lady is your girlfriend?” His voice was stronger than I’d expected from his appearance. If I’d had my eyes closed, I wouldn’t have guessed his age from hearing him speak.
Malcolm put his arm around my shoulder and drew me close. “She is.” He sounded impassive, which frightened me. If he was angry with me, what was I going to do?
“Well, I don’t know what kind of forbidden love thing you’ve got going on, but arresting her is going to have to wait,” the man said. “Unless you want the rites to fail entirely.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Wallach,” Ragsdale said.
“We like to have loved ones participate, if they can stomach it. Gives the candidate something to hang onto in the dark times. Taking her away just before…might as well stab the boy in the heart and get it over with.”
Ragsdale still looked like he wanted to string me up right then and there, but he said, “You’re the expert. Let’s get this over with. And you,” he said, pointing at me with a trembling finger, “don’t think you’re getting out of this. If he—”
“Please don’t jinx this, Mr. Ragsdale,” I said. “Malcolm’s going to live.”
To my surprise, Wallach extended his hand to me. “Darius Wallach,” he said. “And you are…?”
“Helena Davies.”
He didn’t recognize my name. “Come with me, and I’ll explain the procedure.” He swiped his identification badge, which hung on a lanyard around his neck, across a sensor, and the door swooped open like something in a science fiction movie.
“He has to be strapped down for his own protection, and to keep the rites from failing, of course,” Wallach said. I took a moment to observe him instead of the room. He was old, not as old as my friend Iakkhos Kalivas who ran the Neutrality called the Labyrinth, but at least seventy, and his snowy white hair was a stark contrast to his lined dark skin. He wore his hair pulled tightly back from his face so it made a fluffy pouf at the back of his head. Like the woman, he was dressed in surgical scrubs, but where hers were a plain maroon, his were black with hundreds of multicolored palm trees printed on them. I nodded as if any of that made sense. Protection from what?
“The Damerel rites—the new and improved rites, I should say—alter the human body to accept an aegis, which allows a magus to tap into his personal reserves of magic and direct them outward,” Wallach said. “A team of magi, steel magi in Mr. Campbell’s case, since he proposes to become a steel magus, build up a resonance within the aegis that matches his own body. Then another team of bone magi enhance the resonance of his body so both are strong and perceptible.”
“I’m not sure I understand what the resonance is. Is it like a vibration?”
“A metaphysical one. You’re not a magus?”
“No.” So he really didn’t know who I was. It was comforting that there was at least one person in the room who didn’t think I’d just thrown my life away.
“Then you won’t be able to perceive it. That’s all right, it’s not necessary. Then the last set of bone magi open a path to his heart and the aegis is inserted—and from there it’s up to him.”
“Is that metaphysical, again?”
“No, it’s a literal opening. Non-surgical, pure magic. A scalpel would interfere with the resonance. Let me show you the aegis. I’m very proud of it,” Wallach said, guiding me toward one of the cabinets. The upper doors were frosted glass, and Wallach opened one and removed a Plexiglas ball, holding it out to me. “Don’t touch it, just look. Isn’t it beautiful?”
Floating in the center of the ball was a slim needle that was pointed on both ends. It was about an inch long and shone like silver in the many, many lights. It looked like something an assassin would coat with poison and put in a blowpipe. “It’s a tungsten-molybdenum steel alloy that until now has had mostly manufacturing uses,” Wallach said. “But we’re still just calling him a steel magus. Tungsten magus doesn’t have the right impact.”
“Malcolm said something about…resonance being a new concept?”
“Ah.” Wallach winked at me. “It will change the nature of the Damerel rites entirely. A magus’s resonance…frequency, to use your vibration metaphor…changes when the aegis is implanted. Identifying the new resonance is crucial to the success of a second Damerel. Now the procedure won’t kill him outright.”
“But it’s still dangerous.”
“We’re sticking a damned great needle into his heart. Of course it’s dangerous. But much of that danger can be mitigated, and some of it the candidate can overcome. That’s your part, if you aren’t the squeamish type.”
“Um…”
“‘Squeamish’ is the wrong word,” the woman said. She looked like she could be the old man’s granddaughter, down to the pouf of hair at the back of her head. “He means, can you bear seeing your loved one in pain without freaking out?”
“I think so.”
“You have to know so, or we can’t let you stay.”
I looked at Malcolm, who was standing beside the operating table fingering the straps. “I know it,” I said.
“Fine. Mr. Campbell, if you’re ready?”
“No,” Malcolm said, and with a few quick strides he was at my side and holding me close. I wrapped my arms around him and buried my face in his chest. “I’m glad you’re here,” he whispered. “Everything else, we can figure out.”
My heart felt as if it might burst out of my chest with happiness. He wasn’t angry, he was going to live through this, and then…we’d figure it out. Together. “I love you,” I whispered, and let him go.
Malcolm took off his black T-shirt and handed it to me. I wadded it into a ball and clasped it between my hands, resisting the urge to hold it to my face so I could breathe him in. He walked back to the table and lay down on it. The woman began strapping him to the table, starting at the ankles and working her way upward. She pulled a couple of padded boards to swivel out from beneath the table, then handed Malcolm a mouth guard, which he fitted between his lips before stretching his arms out to either side. The woman strapped his arms to the padded boards, put a final strap across his forehead, then went around again, quietly talking to Malcolm. I saw him put pressure on the restraints, which gave a tiny bit in places; the woman tightened the bindings, then stepped back, satisfied.
Wallach, in the meantime, was leaning against one of the walls, evidently praying. At least, his lips were moving soundlessly, and he had his hands pressed together in front of him. “What’s he doing?” I quietly asked Lucia, who with Ragsdale had come to stand near me.
“I have no idea,” Lucia said. “What are you doing? Have you completely lost your mind?”
“The oracle sent me,” I said. Nothing that had happened had changed my conviction that I’d done what I was meant to do.
“Then the oracle has lost its mind,” Lucia said, and wouldn’t say anything more.
The room was silent and still, with Wallach’s soundless speech the only movement. A whiff of ozone reached my nose, sharp and fresh. I wished I could go to Malcolm’s side and remind him I was here—but he already knew that, and I didn’t want to disrupt the rites. I caught myself tapping my toe and stilled it.
I glanced at Ragsdale, who wasn’t looking at me in a way that said he was entirely too aware of my presence. My courage failed me briefly. I’d always thought Ragsdale liked me, or at least respected me. Maybe that makes your betrayal worse, I thought, and was surprised by it. I hadn’t betrayed anything…had I? It was possible Ragsdale had respected me so long as he thought we shared the same values, and now he knew how long I’d been flouting the rules…no wonder he was pissed off.
Finally, Wallach pushed off from the wall and pressed a button on the side of the cabinet. “This shouldn’t take long, but I have to remind you all not to interfere from this point on, no matter what you see or hear.”
The door opened, and a handful of magi filed in, all of them dressed in scrubs of one color or another—no, there were only three colors, the maroon the first woman wore, a traditional teal color, and pure white. There were only two of the latter, and they held back from the others, who all grouped around the table, obscuring Malcolm from view. Some shifting, and then they all went still. The two in white hovered by the door, like guards, though I couldn’t imagine what they were guarding against. I hoped all these magi had been cleared by Lucia. The thought of a shadow cabal magus interfering in Malcolm’s Damerel rites made me feel dizzy. I swallowed hard and focused on his hand, which was all I could see of him. It was loosely closed and even looked relaxed.
I still felt dizzy, and closed my eyes for a moment to clear them. When I opened them, the fuzzy, dizzy feeling had grown, but now I recognized it was coming from outside me, that the air itself had gone fuzzy. I blinked and kept looking at his hand. The smell of ozone was growing, just strong enough to be perceptible, and a slight vinegary tang joined it. Malcolm’s hand closed more tightly.
“Very good,” Wallach said, his voice muffled as if he were speaking through gauze. “Now let’s increase his body’s resonance. We want to get him up to speed.”
Malcolm’s hand clenched, and the tendons stood
out on his arm. I covered my mouth to hold back a cry that would surely disturb the magi at their work. The dizzy feeling subsided, but the ozone and vinegar smell increased until the air was sharp and hot and electric. The lights began to take on a purple tinge, like a black-light bulb. “Excellent,” Wallach said, and this time I could barely make out his words, he sounded so distant. “Now, the aegis. Mr. Campbell, feel free to scream. Don’t fight this.”
The two magi dressed in white came forward to stand at Malcolm’s head. For a long, long moment, nothing changed. Then Malcolm’s arm, his whole body, strained against the straps, and he screamed, an agonized, garbled sound. I gasped and clenched my own hands tight, my nails cutting into my palms. The magi stepped away from the table like they were giving him air, but to me it looked as if he were dying, trapped on that table with a piece of metal embedded in his heart, and only Wallach’s warning kept me from rushing to his side to free him.
Malcolm thrashed once more and went horribly limp, his hand relaxing all at once. The magi quickly began freeing him from the straps while Wallach bent over him, thumbing up his eyelids and checking his pulse. I made an involuntary squeak, and Wallach looked up at me. “Come,” he said, and I flung myself at Malcolm, taking his hand and clutching it.
Malcolm didn’t move. He wasn’t breathing. He was so still I began to cry. “Malcolm, wake up,” I begged him. “Remember what you said? You promised you’d always come back. Malcolm, wake up!” I looked up at Wallach. “He’s dead!”
“Don’t give up,” Wallach said.
“This was your fault! You gave him hope in something that could never happen!”
“His body has to decide whether to accept its new destiny. Talk to him. Remind him why he’s coming back.”
The Book of Betrayal Page 19