God, what wouldn’t people do for power. Not even safety, security, money, fame. But power. What wouldn’t they do to rule over something, anything, even if it was just a handful of former humans on a rotten, infected planet.
I pushed my beer away. “Look. Johnny is not currently a... a one-man army or whatever. But if she were an army, that’s the kind she’d be. In the sense that she would never, ever join another army, even if you were fighting on the same side. She’d rather lose for sure than risk being... double-crossed, sacrificed, or whatever. She hates that the Society was investigating her. That’s the only way I’ve been able to keep passing on information about what she’s doing. If she thought...”
“I know that,” she said impatiently. “Why do you think I tried to cover for you at the party?”
“Thanks for that, by the way. That was the most terrifying thing that’s happened to me in ages. This week included.”
“Nicholas, stop joking. Papa says... based on what you have given us… there is information available for her. They are finding things she has no access to, things that are still coming in. But we need her to...”
To do what only she can do, I thought. You don’t want to say give us access to her resources. You wanted to say lend us her brain. And you just stopped yourself.
For whatever They want her for. That’s why.
They both still think she’s a weapon. And they both want to disarm her.
Unless Sofia is serious about actually providing this data so that Johnny can come up with something, anything…
“All right,” I said slowly. “How are we going to convince her to at least talk? Without... you know. I mean, you know how she thinks... she would think if there was a way to prevent this, you’d only get in her way. She doesn’t trust the Society and she doesn’t trust your-dad-slash-my-boss. And she doesn’t trust you. And she shouldn’t, actually, is what I’m getting at here. And you shouldn’t trust her either. Basically I think we all need family therapy.”
“Your only connection to the Ssarati is me, your girlfriend,” she said firmly, then added, perhaps at my expression, “That is, we will keep telling her that. It’s good, it covers things. Then you can continue to help us. All of us. Nicholas, trust or not... she is needed. She will respond to the need. She’ll just have to set aside the trust thing. She wants to save the world, doesn’t she?”
“Yeah. She thinks she was given...” I bit my tongue just in time, and covered it with an enormous swig of the flat, warm beer. “She thinks that’s her duty, as a genius. It’s all she thinks about.”
“I suppose if we all had her gifts…”
“Yeah, but look at what it’s turned her into,” I said, trying to keep the anger out of my voice. “Our greatest fear is losing people. Hers is losing… I don’t know. Losing control of the narrative.”
“What?”
“I don’t even know.”
Sofia stared out the window, drumming her silver-painted nails on the table. It had begun to snow again in earnest, blowing against the wobbly medieval glass and catching in invisible ripples. On the corner closest to us, the green-painted streetlamp twisted, screamed, and walked away, its light going out at the last second. “Papa is in the city, you know. I asked him to come and he finally came. How can we get her to meet with him, at least? So that he can make his case?”
“Well,” I said, “she likes food.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“...YOU’VE GOT YOGURT on your mask.”
“Sour cream.” Johnny stuffed another tiny sandwich under her mask, then pulled it down again. “I can’t stop eating these and I don’t even know what’s in them.”
“Well, then it’s probably people,” I said absently, staring around the room. On the surface, it looked festive, even theatrical: many people in masks half or full, with sprays of feathers, little hats, capes, cloaks, dresses, suits. Some people had the kind of mask you had to hold up with a stick, and were having serious trouble at the buffet table.
But it was quiet, even subdued. The room was too dark to see the full effect of the people who had dressed up: the glitter and glitz. Meanwhile, I was in my regular clothes—jeans and a sweater—and a mask that Louis had found for me. I had assumed Johnny would have a secret store in Prague that would delightedly sell her a mask and a gown, but she’d spent so much of the day on the phone and her laptop that she never ended up going out to shop, and was dressed much the same as me.
At least the mask covered her black eyes, I reflected, and then reflected further that if I mentioned this, she’d throw me out a window. What was the word for that?
Bad enough that when I had spoken to Carla earlier, she had been half in tears, demanding to know what the hell I was doing in Prague. We saw a picture of you, she said. With Johnny: on the street. It had taken a long time, and all my minimal lying skills, to convince her that Johnny, who we already knew was pretty damn weird, was simply dating someone who looked a lot like me. A bit like how her two favourite Backstreet Boys kept dating women who looked exactly like each other. The photo was probably faked, too.
When you come back, you should start going out with people too, she’d said. Like normal people.
I’m normal people, you little turd.
I mean normal in that way.
Who says that’s normal? I never got a vote.
Several cats were also attending the party, and I was unsure whether they had been invited or not; as one of the only non-human creatures able to sense and use magic, though, I supposed it was technically possible that they were Society members. In fact, it was entirely likely that some of them outranked me. Some people had wandered off for private meetings or other things in a half-dozen rooms in the small gloomy mansion, people invited with no more than an elbow-tap and a nod, and a few of the cats had trotted after people going to these.
Collaborators, I thought, feeling sick. How would you know? Only a few people, Johnny had said, had been offered covenants like hers, deals for things they greatly desired, which the Ancient Ones might hand over, cackling, knowing the sting in its tail. But supposing you had something to trade for those rare deals. Supposing you suddenly had something the enemy wanted, and also knew there was no fighting back: that there never had been, that generations sometimes had perished while you frantically figured out how to at least push Them out.
No, I said. There would be a revolt.
There’s only a revolt when you can kill your enemy, Johnny had said. If not, you just fight and fail and everybody is stamped down anyway. But appeasement has always been an option. It’s just one we’ve not taken except on a very small scale: cities, valleys. What if the Society is trying to do it on a larger one, and lets most of the world die if they’re taken care of? They’ve got the skills and the knowledge to survive after an invasion. They might even be useful to the new rulers.
I felt sick, had felt sick all day; and I thought that it might be from hope, which was trying to shoulder its way back into a place inside me that I had tried to wall off. Johnny had said she might have a plan now: huge, ambitious, and (I assumed) practically impossible. And she didn’t have enough data to be really sure of it. But the Society did. She’d trade, I thought. Something. If she trusted them, she’d do a trade. Surely.
It was painful to hope, like the grating ends of a broken bone. If only it would stay still, it could heal.
“Ah, the special guests. You got my masks! You must be Nicholas? Very pleased to meet you at last. Joanna’s left-hand man, eh? And the big man the right hand? Where is he?”
“He couldn’t make it,” Johnny said.
“Thanks for inviting us, Mr. d’Souza.” I shook Louis’s hand, quickly scanning Sofia’s elaborate costume and meaningfully pursed lips: Don’t screw this up! Johnny, I knew, would have loved nothing better than to make a big deal about my girlfriend in front of Louis, but she had already agreed to keep her mouth shut to spare me and Sofia the grief. It was to be understood merely that Johnny had come to
Prague, and had taken me along as usual, because that was how we worked.
Louis’s mask was bright blue and gold, a bird, maybe an owl, with exaggeratedly large eyeholes and a diminutive beak that did not quite fit over his Roman nose. His bright golden skin, a little lighter than Sofia’s, made his glistening salt-and-pepper hair pick up all the light in the room.
Johnny gave him a fake smile and did not put her hand out; Louis did not seem offended. “Good party. Wouldn’t have wanted to miss it.”
“Nonsense. My old friend. You are all right now?” he said solicitously. “Terrible thing, Edinburgh. A gas line went, they say. Very lucky, though. Killed all the creatures.”
“Yes, I’m all right.” Johnny touched her mask, delicately, where the bruising still showed through the eyeholes. “It looks worse than it is.”
“I think it’s very possible that you saved my baby’s life,” he said gravely. “She was in your private ladies’ room when it began. Ran outside through an emergency door.”
As they spoke, making what Louis clearly considered the necessary small talk required to spiral in to the question of (say) joining forces to save the world, I remembered Sofia telling me about the first few times she’d seen Johnny: aged six or seven, and the blonde child coming to the house with the calm serious man like a statue always behind her.
Johnny had not been able to cure Sofia’s mother’s cancer, but she had bought the woman the best care and pain relief available, and two more years of life, until death came when Sofia was nine. And what does that mean, Sofia had said, to buy years of life?
I had kept my mouth shut. Even now, after everything, it was too painful to bring up. It occurred to me that Sofia might be the only person who really understood what it meant, though: why what Johnny had done to me hurt so keenly and permanently, and felt as if it would never heal. Johnny sure as hell didn’t.
The house in Braga, before we moved to Lisbon, Sofia had said softly: the sitting room with all its plants and trees. She would come in, so small, with the cheques, the pill bottles, asking about Mama, how we were doing, if she could... I don’t know. Hire a gardener, hire a cook, a driver, to help us. And I would watch from the upper floor, waiting for Papa to ask me to come down... in a dress, with my good shoes. She helped us for years, she never asked anything in return, but it was understood, always, always, that I must dress like I did for church. My best, always my best. I never questioned it, it made perfect sense. Only now I don’t remember why.
“And so we come to this,” Louis said. “People here know why you have come. Some of them think you are a fraud, and we no longer work together because you were discredited. Some of them do not know you, they ask me: You invited a university student, yes? One of Sofia’s classmates? Some of them think: No, the world is not ending, what we are seeing is of no import, so it does not matter who comes to the party tonight, fraud or no. And some think even if you are not a fraud, you cannot help what is happening. So, these ones are eating, drinking, as if the world would end very soon. You know those ones.”
“The ones with the full masks,” Johnny said, looking around interestedly.
“Just so. They did not want you to come. There are many discussions happening tonight, about whether we, on our own, can... at least mitigate the damage from what is coming. Even though we do not know what it is. But a few of us, a very few, have come up with a hypothesis. And we are finding data to support it. New, good data. Fresh samples. Even from a few hours ago.”
“Data regarding what?”
“Let me get you a little glass of wine. Fee, do you want a wine?”
“Louis. What data. And from who?”
Louis hesitated, and glanced around us. No one was obviously listening in, but several people were non-obviously doing so; I felt the pressure of their gaze on my skin like a hand. He said, “We should find another room to talk. No?”
“Why?” she said. “If everybody knows what we’re here for.”
“Not everybody,” he said, “needs to know everything. No? You do not go around your labs, your factories, telling every person what you are doing next.”
“No,” she said. “But I tell the physicists about my physics. I tell the engineers about my engineering.”
He narrowed his eyes minutely, a very Sofia expression. “Then I suppose you want me to tell everybody that there is a case being developed. Everybody in here. You want them to hear that? A case of the old laws, the laws of Umash-Turskel. Against you.”
Johnny laughed, sounding relieved. “Well that sounds very impressive,” she said. “I don’t fall under your jurisdiction, Louis. Scare your own people with that stuff.”
“Anyone who has done magic falls under our jurisdiction,” he said flatly. “Because magic is our jurisdiction.”
People were drifting over now, interested. Sinister faceless faces, floating masks in the gloom. I felt an intense urge to freeze, not even to breathe. This was the one thing, perhaps the only thing, that Johnny could not stand, for all her love of the spotlight. This, the open wound that still bled invisibly from her: that she should be accused of exactly what he was about to accuse her of.
Johnny glanced at Sofia, then back at Louis. Under the mask, her smile had not faltered. “You know what you sound like? A little kid making up stories at school to get another kid in trouble.”
“Do I? No, I am merely sharing information. Not public laws, no. The Ssarati does not care for those, never has. Our own: the laws we keep and preserve, of ten thousand years standing, regarding the usage of magic that harms human life. Laws that cannot be broken. Laws we have taken it upon ourselves to enforce, for the safety of all the world.”
“Some threat,” Johnny said. “When have I ever used magic? Not everyone can, you know. All I’ve ever done for the Society is help you, Louis. Found you manuscripts. Translated spells. And now this.” She shook her head, sighed. “Well. Thank you for the food. And the mask. But I thought you came here to talk about something else. I see you haven’t.”
There was a long pause. Louis’ face was reddening under the mask, making his hair seem even brighter.
They won’t prove anything, they won’t prove anything. She’s spent her whole life making sure she’s never witnessed. Only by me. And I never said anything about her doing magic. Just studying it. They won’t prove anything.
Louis said, in a tone that made my blood run cold, “There’s precedent for everything in our history. Don’t underestimate us. We do not need to prove all that was done. Even intent is enough. Even suspicion of intent is enough.”
“That’s not justice,” she said. “Not a ‘case.’ Not a ‘law.’”
“Nevertheless.”
“You’ve got nothing,” she said.
“You were the cause,” he said loudly, leaning towards her. She refused to lean back. “You. Not a witness to the Incursion. You caused it. You collaborated with the enemy, you let Them in. You powered it somehow with that… machine of yours.”
I waited, heart pounding. The smile slowly fell away from Johnny’s face. “Prove it.”
“We will.”
“Then call me when you do,” she said, and spun on her heel. “I’m headed back to the hotel,” she said over her shoulder. “See you when you get back.”
Three people, at a nod from Louis, smoothly moved in front of the door. Oh God, here it comes: the double-cross, bundling her up, handing her over to the enemy, turning her in for the bounty. And then what will they do with me? Is this the side I’ve picked? Motherfucker, I knew they were going to…
“Johnny, please,” Sofia said, pushing through the few people who hadn’t had the good sense to move. “Please.”
“Good job playing along,” Johnny said, gently unhooking her mask. “Ow. Go Team d’Souza! A well-oiled machine of bullshittery. I thought you had something serious to offer. Instead you threaten me with… this crap, this tattletale power play. Jesus! You people. This is why I don’t trust you. And why I wouldn’t trust your dat
a if my life depended on it.”
“It does!” Sofia said desperately. “I… I didn’t know about…” She glanced back at her father, convincingly. Johnny didn’t look fooled, but Sofia went on, “Please, let us just talk in private. This doesn’t have to be a… No one will be forced.”
If you think she won’t let her one chance at saving the world slip away so she can save her ego instead… I wanted to say. But surely everyone in the entire room had figured that out by now.
At last, Johnny shrugged. “Well, I’ll hear you out,” she said. “No more. Because any asshole that starts off by threatening me instead of offering me something is not someone I want to do business with.”
“It’s not business,” Louis said. “It’s duty. To work together to save the world.”
“I don’t want to work with you,” Johnny said. “Let’s just get that out of the way.”
“I hear you.”
I trailed after them automatically, but Louis stopped me, pretending regret, at the door of his chosen meeting room, painted in peeling black and decorated with ancient brass studs. “No, no,” he said. “I am sorry, no. You do not know these protocols. Those involved only.”
I glanced at him with real alarm for a second. It was disconcerting to not be able to see what was happening in the shadows of the mask’s eyes. Who else was in that room? There was still plenty of scope for a double-cross, and I was slowly and queasily realizing that as much as I had wanted to bring Johnny to some kind of justice, that was colliding pretty much head-on with wanting her to save the world. So far from ensuring that Johnny didn’t interfere with their plans, I now didn’t want them to interfere with hers. My sense of self-preservation had never been great, but it had been getting a lot of practice over the last few days.
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