Through Death

by Parker Jaysen

  Through Death

  Parker Jaysen

  Hellriders in Love, Episode 3

  Three Bunny Farm Press

  Copyright © 2020 by Parker Jaysen

  All rights reserved.

  Design: John Van Pelt

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Table of Contents

  ACT I

  ACT II

  ACT III

  More from Parker Jaysen

  Other lesbian romance from Three Bunny Farm Press

  Three of Vipers

  There’s only one rule in cards – don’t use your magic.

  But every rider has a tell. Ley mages gaze up and to the left when bluffing, as if to make a show that they’re not cheating.

  Taking notice of this would not be an abuse . . . hypothetically.

  — Hellrider lore

  ACT I

  Now I have to wait for the go/no go from the guild council, and there’s nothing to do but make a circle-check of my phib in the garage.

  Correction: three circle-checks, kicking the phib’s fat tires, rattling shutters, inspecting the gutters that allow the carriage frame to shed liquid fog and acid rain.

  The council has a choice. Should a solo rider run the marsh with this cargo that started out as an egg and is now a baby dragon, even though she just lost her partner Jess, and possibly is out of her mind with grief?

  Or should they defy the city elders, dash the dragon’s brains out, and declare the hellrun a loss?

  I’d know how to choose – flip a fucking coin. I honestly don’t care.

  It was going to be our 26th run together, Jess and me. Nothing special about 26, but if you knew ley mages, you’d understand. Our partnerships are something more – a true connection that hellriders and lakers can only dream of. Jess and I were something more.

  I might be out of my mind. Did I mention that?

  I start around the phib a fourth time. One of the council has shown up, to watch over me, I suppose, or evaluate my state of mind. It’s terrible, that’s my state of mind.

  The woman is in the observation booth above the cargo bay floor, her arms folded. Thea Sturtevant, you can’t mistake her – shining blonde hair, not a strand out of place. Those who can’t do, supervise, right?

  Why isn’t she in the meeting, anyway? If she’s so non-essential to the council, she’s got some nerve coming in here and acting like my overseer.

  Well, I can play-act too. No. That’s wrong. The phib is my life, out there. There’s nothing for show, no room for error, no leeway for wandering. Everything here is utilitarian – my phib, the other phibs in various states of repair, the workbenches with their neat rows of wrenches and brazing wands.

  It all has the purpose of making the marsh survivable.

  Not survivable enough, I can hear Jess say.

  I examine every centimeter of the phib’s exterior one more time. Thea will see how careful I am.

  Okay, the council is taking a really long time. Maybe I do care how it turns out.

  I worry at the idea like a loose tooth. Nah. Not even a little bit. I glare up at the observation booth before kicking a tire one more time.

  I drift out to the stable yard where at least the council can’t stare down on my head.

  The boks are standing there, hitched to half their harness rig.

  What the hell is going on? Marsh Station is better than this. Everything seems frayed at the edges without Jess, and that somehow helps me feel better. It’s not just me. It’s the whole universe.

  The beasts should not have been left unattended in their traces. Boks are bred for their broad, fringed hooves – they can practically walk on water – but their swept-back horns are fucking knives. A bok accident in harness is no sight you ever want to see. Somebody should have untacked them.

  But instead of calling for the stable crew or going back to the garage to raise hell with the Sturtevant lady, I’m suddenly light-headed, and I’m leaning my temple against Mistral’s warm flank of soft gray wool.

  It would not be just somebody. It would be Jess untacking the team. She loved the boks I think more than she loved me.

  Except – if she were here, we wouldn’t be waiting on a council decision, would we? We’d already be on our way, right now. We’d be riding that bright undulating line across the ley grid. We’d be skimming the marsh like a sweet summer’s day.

  Why has she left me alone?

  If I were a betting woman – and I am – I’d say the guild won’t postpone. For one thing, there’s no leverage. The council will side with the city elders, who apparently want their dragon, leaving riders to face the risk.

  For another, Thea Sturtevant’s appearance is probably not random. She is observing me because the run will go on.

  But there’s no way this can be a solo run. It just can’t be. A marsh rider, when she’s trancing, reading the ley grid, can’t babysit a wild demon at the same time.

  A marsh run is an out-of-body experience. Sometimes it feels like a near-death experience.

  The marsh is limbo, Jess would say, laughing. She’d put on a serious tone, like an oracle of old. It’s the gateway to the afterlife.

  And I’d make googly eyes and scary claws at her, and we’d joke about how it will be the death of us.

  Marsh riders understand.

  I’m on my way to alert someone about the boks when the guild leaders finally come out of the lodge. Maura and the ones at other stations would have called in remote. Thea, still up in the observation booth, raises her hand in a twirling sign – go.

  I grimace back in frustration – I can’t help myself. Like go? Boss, did you forget my partner is gone?

  I mean, sure, I called it, shocker, money talks. But I sure as shit ain’t going alone, not with a dragon on top of everything else. Even if it is a baby. Especially a baby. What the hell.

  Thea disappears from the booth, but before I can even think about catching up to her, three techs come out of one of the workshops with my reinforced safe on a pushcart.

  I guess there’s work to be done. I swallow the bile in my throat and follow them to the phib.

  I saw the melted remains of Dorie’s sleigh’s safe, and the reinforcements on this one don’t impress me – a couple of bands of metal etched with shielding runes, cinder-shaped. It rocks slightly as the dragon thuds around inside.

  This is just great.

  Inside the phib, guild techs bolt down the safe and connect an umbilical to our control panel, presumably to read out life signs and whatever. The girls’ calm competence settles me, a little. They finish with the safe and start out with the empty cart.

  “Hey, wait. What – is this secure?”

  “Um.” One tech turns back to face me – it’s Zee, I’ve been so frazzled I didn’t even recognize her. The others keep going across the yard, the cart’s wheels squeaking and thumping. Zee’s black hair is slicked back into a severe knot. “Hey, Lucy. They didn’t give us much time.”

  “But wait! What do I do?”

  “Do?”

  “I’m the rider – I’m taking this to Transit Station?” I finish the sentence in an upward squawk, as a question.

  “Oh!” says Zee. “Good luck!”

  And they’re gone, the whole goddamned perky mess of them.

  Is this a hazing? A practical joke? I look around the yard, and my heart lurches as I realize I’m half-expecting to see Jess laughing down at me from an upper bunkroom window.

  No. They won’t catch Lucy crying.

  I round up the stable crew to finish hooking up the p
hib to the boks’ rig, and I double-check each strap and binding. Then, taking Mistral by her surcingle, I lead the two boks out to the marsh gate, behind us the phib’s balloon tires scrunching softly through gravel. They whinny loudly, as if to say, finally, let’s get out there.

  I pass them each a protein nugget. “I hear you.”

  Then I turn, thank the crew, adjust my hood and gloves, and step up into the phib, letting the door slam behind me.

  Cargo on board, Jess. Let’s go.

  “I’m not Jess, I’m sorry.”

  It’s Thea standing there, but surely a different Thea from the one that had been observing in the garage. No skin showing around gleaming top-end leathers. Styled gloves and boots that could cut your eye. Most remarkably, no sign of her golden tresses, and in their place a regulation marshcap – the specialized hood of a marsh rider with integrated optics and telecom.

  She changed fast.

  I’m still ogling at the sight of a councilwoman in full marsh rider regalia. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “I’m coming. I’m on this run.”

  “But you’re a....” What is she? She’s a guild leader, at least in name. But is she even a ley mage? She’s rich enough to have bought herself a spot on the council, we always say, but otherwise rather useless. Just about every rider through Marsh Station forms a theory about Thea. Looks like I’m going to have some juicy gossip of my own to add to the mill. If I get through this.

  I’m sure she reads all that and more in my expression. “Not a rider?” She looks around the phib like she owns it. Hell, maybe she does.

  “Well,” I concede. “Yeah.”

  If she’s dissatisfied with the phib, or has any opinion of it at all, it doesn’t show. “I’m sorry about Jess. I know nothing I could say is enough. But I’m sorry.”

  I think I’m in shock. Someone should check my pulse, my pupils. I know I’m staring, but nothing is adding up.

  “Lucy?”

  I feel for my vitals. Heartbeat, breath, ley symmetry. Breathing – breathing is good. “Thea. Hello.”

  Jess, where are you?

  “Thea, would you secure the entry, please? I mean, if you’re sure. You’re sure?” She gives the merest of nods. “Okay. And we don’t need any other go-ahead from anyone inside? From the council? No, of course we don’t.”

  Thea smiles faintly, reaches for the door’s locking levers, and shuts us in.

  A council member. A glamour queen. Technically, my boss. “Welcome aboard!”

  If anyone is boss of this phib, on this run, it’s me.

  Admittedly, the rumors about Thea can’t all be true. Her family escaped Paragon. Her family owned Paragon. Her wealth was all in old fuels. She wears every gem but has mastered none.

  Right now she’s drawing on some little desk that she had packed away. Her fingers are long and she indeed is wearing every gem the guild gives out, as if she could possibly have earned them.

  Oh no. Maybe she fancies herself a student of the marsh, or a tourist.

  I am so going to get whoever assigned this mission. But this anger feels better than the terrible emptiness whenever I think of Jess.

  “Paper doesn’t last in the marsh,” I say, and step up into the observation turret while we’re still able to keep the hatch open.

  I’m used to being in the phib with a partner, even a partner I don’t much like. But this one is getting under my skin so fast, partly because she didn’t earn her way like I did. Like Jess did. Because her family’s profiteering or gems bought her this hobby ride.

  Because she doesn’t belong out here in Jess’s place.

  By nightfall we’ll have reached the end of the station road into the marsh, such as it is. After this, we have only the leylines.

  On the marsh, you keep to the causeways as much as possible, but most of the route is trackless in the normal sense. Compasses and clocks don’t work. And there are no stars.

  There’s just the mage, the boks, the phib, and a kind of script the marsh follows, loosely. As long as there’s at least one ley mage on board holding the angles of the universe in her head, she can stay on course. Though, again, even the notion of there being a course is misleading. More like a schedule, say. A bingo card, some riders call it.

  I stretch my shoulders, my neck – once I’m plugged in, I’ll be paying attention to too much to remember my muscles. Jess and I used to help each other remember to move.

  I look away from the portview and Thea is watching me somberly. It may be that right now the only thing that’s keeping me sane is that she’s not making a big deal of anything. She’s not asking excited questions about marsh conditions or bok idiosyncrasies, or about ley navigation.

  And boks are damned weird if you’ve never spent time with them.

  I’m afraid to plug in.

  There’s no equipment required, as such, for ley sensing. Ley mages can go under the gloom anytime, though there’s no reason for it in station – except to keep tabs on your best friend and partner while they’re dying on a simple mushroom expedition.

  But on runs, we plug into the phibs to view the 360-degree real-world overlay in visible, IR, and UV wavelengths. Sphere of the ley grid, sphere of spacetime, like a double exposure. The mage’s power is in keeping those two frames in alignment.

  A strong mage, together with her anchors – fellow mages at each guild station broadcasting ley beacons – can resist any marsh trick of time or direction.

  I’ve been aware of the leylines for some minutes, waiting in my peripheral vision – more undulating waves than lines, their colors more like sounds than hues. But as I reach for the umbilical, I freeze.

  Plugging in feels like turning an irrevocable corner. It feels like saying goodbye again, and I didn’t even get to say goodbye the first time.

  “They shouldn’t have let you do this run,” Thea says, closer than I realized. “You were on, too, when she was lost. I told them you needed more time.”

  I don’t know what makes her think she knows what’s right for me or think that I would approve of her talking about me behind my back, much less on a council call. But a gust of relief flows through me. Someone gets it. Even if it’s Thea.

  She’s right, Jess and I were connected at the time. Just a smooth trot on a single bok out to some mushroom site – then blood and horror and finality, and her beacon on the ley grid went from frenzy to flat.

  I wasn’t on comms, but I know Jess screamed, because I screamed.

  Thea puts her hand on my arm. “Let me pilot this bit,” she says.

  Disbelief pushes back my grief once again. The little rich girl wants to try to read the marsh?

  “Oh, by all means,” I say, stepping down from the turret. “Go ahead.” We’ll see if that marshcap of yours is more than just dress-up.

  The marsh isn’t a hobby, and if I weren’t in such a state, I wouldn’t be letting her try this nonsense.

  But as she reaches for the umbilical, it feels like the final straw. I don’t care about this mission.

  I don’t care that we have a live baby dragon to deliver.

  I don’t care about keeping the phib intact, or any of us, or myself, or if we’re lost forever.

  I am sinking.

  So I might be forgiven for taking a few minutes to realize something. Little rich girl is piloting the phib just fine.

  “What are you doing?” But I know what she’s doing. She’s reading the marsh, and she’s reading it expertly. When we’re underway, we leave a wake in the ley grid, and Thea’s wake is sure and clean. No sudden zigs. She’s skimming as beautifully as Jess ever did.

  “There’s some tricky sand ahead,” she says over her shoulder, her eyes half-closed. She’s trancing like a pro, piloting the boks, and communicating, calmly and clearly.

  This is some fucking rabbit hole I’ve dropped into.

  I may not care about the phib or the mission, but her words light up alarm in me anyway. If the tricky sand is what I think it is, it’s far from its
usual location, and it’s acid on the boks feet. It can eat a bok where it stands, from the hooves up.

  It’s more like a combination of quicksand and acid.

  “Hop on and help me steer around,” Thea murmurs.

  I don’t want to see the marsh. I don’t want to.

  “Hold onto me,” she says, in her trancy voice. “I’ll help. Help me.”

  I don’t know what else to do, so I grab her hand, plug in, and let the gloom shimmer over. It’s like being at the center of a glass globe in a gimbal.

  Under us is a plain line, threading between deeper pools on either side. Thea has brought us solidly along one of the right trails.

  And ahead in the gloom, I sense the sand she’s talking about. It’s the stuff I called Oatmeal Valley the first time I encountered it, and then everyone called it that. Gray, hostile, boiling gunk, the boks aren’t safe to walk in it, it doesn’t support any kind of bridge that we could carry, and going around it is a huge fucking pain.

  Because it follows you, somewhat.

  And now it’s nowhere near where it ordinarily is.

  Or rather, when.

  In the marsh, location is a concept that new riders have to unlearn, but there is some order to things.

  It’s like looking at a checkerboard game in progress. If there are queened pieces, you might suppose it’s later in the game. But time doesn’t pass in the usual way, and every game is different.

  Sensing Oatmeal Valley now is like seeing queened pieces on the board, stacked three high – and the game hasn’t even begun yet.

  I don’t know how to explain this.

  Oatmeal Valley can be anywhere, but usually it’s later.

  We decide to compromise and try to keep the sand on our time horizon. Better an enemy you know than one that just opens up under you without warning. Thea steers the boks onto the new course, and then she stops. “This part is harder than I thought it would be,” she says with a smile. “The physical steering.” She steps down through the hatchway and leaves me in the turret, plugged in.