The Multitude

by J M Fraser

  Abelia had wanted him to save Carla. And he was ready to try again. He’d return to the subway station a thousand times if that’s what it took to set things right.

  Brewster tried getting up but remained on the bench. His pulse raced. His mouth wouldn’t open and let him speak.

  The interrogation continued.

  “Afterward, what were you asked to do in the cemetery?”

  “Show Brewster why he shouldn’t change the past.”

  “But what did you do?”

  “I’m sorry, Mother.” Abelia’s voice trembled.

  “Tell me.”

  “I helped Brewster change the past. Sometimes circumstances require improvisation.”

  “Not on my watch,” the girl said.

  Or Brewster’s. He tried saving Carla, but she’d fallen under the wheels of a train, anyway. He couldn’t have let such a thing happen.

  The girl folded her arms. “Why is obedience such a challenge for you?”

  Abelia sniffled. “I’ll try harder next time.”

  “Is there anything you’ve done lately I’d be pleased to hear about?”

  Abelia stared at the flagstone at her knees as if searching for answers in the cracks. She glanced up with a teary-eyed smile. “I learned a new language today. English!”

  The girl laughed, but not with the mirth of a child. Her chuckle carried a combination of surprise and wisdom, like that of a professor who’d heard the right answer from his worst student. “Sometimes I forget how young you are.” She leaned close enough to place her hands on Abelia’s shoulders. “Spend some time with Henry Stoddard. Perhaps his steadfastness will rub off on you.”

  Abelia jerked back. “But we didn’t get along! He still pines for Sarah.”

  “Make a pest of yourself. Sleep in his garden until he takes you in.”

  “I could be sleeping out there for months.”

  The girl made a shooing gesture with her hands. “Go.”

  Abelia rose and headed toward the garden gateway. The butterflies parted to let her in. She paused at the entrance. “Mother?”

  “Yes?”

  “You aren’t clipping my wings, are you?”

  “Oh no, Abelia. I’m delighted with the way things turned out.” The girl flashed a smile.

  Abelia beamed. “How long should I stay with him?”

  “Stoddard? Give him a hundred years and we’ll see how things work out. Mind you, he’s grumpy. I don’t want to hear about you turning him to salt when things don’t go your way.”

  “No, Mother. I would never again—”

  “Go!”

  Abelia disappeared into the garden.

  The girl focused her attention on Brewster, drawing him out of the balcony and into the orchestra section. He blinked, but he couldn’t dissolve the fog from his brain. This girl’s eyes stirred up a better buzz than a double martini. What had he been worried about moments earlier? He’d lost the thread of his thoughts.

  “My name is Asura Ito,” she said.

  Did he have a name anymore? What if he’d died beside Carla, and this little meeting was a final reckoning? What if he’d been stripped of everything but the pain of his failure? Stripped even of his own identity?

  “Who would you like to be?” she asked.

  Easy answer. “Quintus.”

  She arched her brows. “Why?”

  “So I can be with her.”

  “Carla? Maynya?”

  “I guess they’re the same, right?” He tried to sit taller. Better posture stood a chance of clearing the fuzz from his head. And maybe he could take control of what might be the most important interview of his life. Or of his death.

  Asura straightened more, too. Checkmate. “I know all the secrets,” she said. “Would you like me to share any with you?”

  “Are you God?”

  She grinned as wide as the Cheshire Cat. “Think of me as a varsity squad leader. In business speak, perhaps you’d call me a VP of Communications. I spin the tales.”

  In business speak, a VP was only halfway up the corporate ladder—like the banker who’d swooped into Crestview Finance. He slumped. Where had he landed, in a Purgatory of wannabes? “So we aren’t in heaven then, huh?”

  “We’re neither here nor there.”

  “What happened to Carla?” Speaking her name brought on another fist-clenching fit.

  “Gabriella triggered her rapture.”

  His heart thought that sounded good, but his knee started twitching. “I don’t know what you mean, Asura.”

  “Carla and Maynya are omniscient now, thanks to Gabriella’s little shove.”

  He drew in a breath. “So she’s the one who pushed us onto the tracks.”

  “Who else?” Asura shook her head. “That poor, confused girl can be amazing at times, but she disappoints far too often. The same can be said for all of mankind, I suppose.”

  Philosophy lessons could come later. Metaphysics first. “I don’t follow what you mean by omniscient.”

  Asura held out a hand. A pair of monarch butterflies left the garden entrance, fluttered over in swoops and curls, and perched on her index finger, side by side. “Carla’s and Maynya’s essences live in Maynya’s body now, sharing two sets of thoughts and memories. The twins are now one.”

  “They’re both happy then?”

  “Rapturous.”

  Could he believe that? His bouncing knee needed proof. “And they’re safe?”

  “One of them is. You and Quintus do need to rescue Maynya, though.”

  He caught his breath. The knee had been right to worry.

  “What else would you like me to share?” she asked.

  “How will this turn out?” His last rescue attempt hadn’t accomplished much. But why waste questions on cause and effect in a world with untrustworthy realities? “Never mind. The more I learn, the less I know.”

  “Well, I’m always curious.” Asura headed into the garden. She came back with a red-and-blue ball in her hands. “Let’s play a game while we talk.”

  She settled onto the bench again and bounced the ball across the path. “Why did you consider killing yourself, Brewster?”

  The act of catching the ball almost distracted him from hearing her. When he did, his reaction grew from the bottom up, lurching his stomach before heading north to his mind. “Just for a second, I thought about jumping with her, but I came to my senses.”

  “Voices in your head? Flashes of light? Some things can’t be allowed to happen.”

  “You mean you were the voices? What’ve you been doing, toying with us all along?” He bounced the ball back. Hard.

  Asura handled the rebound off the flagstone with ease. She kept her composure for the most part but revealed a hint of anger by narrowing her eyes. “This game involves answering questions, Brewster, not yelling accusations at me. Why did you consider killing yourself?”

  He fought against a lump in his throat. “Quintus needed whatever extra strength I could give him.”

  “You would have sacrificed your own life for your brother?”

  “And for Maynya.” He nearly dropped what he found himself holding. Through some crazy breach in the time-space continuum, the ball rested in his hands instead of hers. Its color had changed to match Asura’s kimono, blue as the sky with puffy streaks of white.

  “Do you remember the story of Abraham and Isaac?” she asked.

  “I’m having trouble remembering much of anything.”

  “Abraham agreed to kill his son Isaac because he thought God wanted that. But God stopped him. He’d merely been testing the poor man.”

  Several more butterflies fluttered out of the gateway. They circled Asura’s head like a halo. “You passed your trial, Brewster.”

  He gripped the ball tighter. “Okay, I get it now. This is a dream, right? Wake me up. The last thing I need is some manipulative—”

  “Suppose I say you can save both Carla and Maynya and spend the rest of your life with both of them?”

&
nbsp; The possibility knocked the wind out of him. But he didn’t dare let himself believe in promises by a girl fully capable of destroying him with a simple comment such as I’m joking. You are, in fact, asleep.

  “Bounce the ball back. Didn’t your parents ever teach you how to play a game?”

  The thing had turned to crystal. Despite arms turned to jelly, he somehow managed to get it back in her hands.

  “I have one condition,” she said.

  He cringed.

  “Don’t worry. I’m letting you off easy, although even considering suicide is a great sin. Do you remember how I gave dreams to two witnesses so they’d remember seeing a murder?”

  “You did that?”

  “Of course. Gabriella lost control of this game long before you were ever born. You can’t imagine how many dreams I’ve had to plant in her head to keep her on track.”

  She tossed the ball to him. This time, it changed into a globe. The markings seemed like a child’s handiwork—crayoned outlines of green continents and blue oceans, with the coloring straying over the lines in places. Names had been scrawled beneath oddly shaped territories where the United States should have been. Sanctimonia and Virtus filled much of the area where Texas belonged.

  “Brewster will confess to Carla’s murder and live in solitary confinement without appeal. A scribe needs peace to write a proper gospel. That’s my condition.”

  Just as he feared, she’d pulled the rug out from beneath him.

  He closed his eyes. Counted to five. Reopened them.

  Dream or real, she remained on the bench across the path, waiting for an answer.

  “How exactly does that get me closer to Carla and Maynya?”

  “Because you’ll be Quintus. Sometimes you’ll dream about being a man in jail.”

  “And during these dreams?”

  “You’ll be a happy man, omniscient, fully aware of your life with Carla and Maynya. Think of it as walking the earth with heaven in your pocket. Carla and Maynya are heaven to you, aren’t they?”

  “They’re everything.”

  Asura leveled a steady gaze on him. “Do you agree to my condition?”

  Yes or no? Up or down? Of course he’d agree. He nodded.

  The globe transformed into Albus’s head, grinning up at him.

  He bobbled it to the path.

  “My angels will help when they can,” Asura said, “but don’t delude yourself into thinking you’re out of danger. The devil never sleeps.”

  The king’s head reformed into a red trident, wriggling along the flagstone like a snake.

  CHAPTER 35

  An eye-blink later

  Quintus grabbed one of the broken tent’s remaining posts to prevent a wave of dizziness from toppling him to his knees. A hole in his memory had swallowed whatever happened from the moment his brother exploded in a white puff. He must have blacked out. Perhaps the beam struck him a glancing blow before scattering the pillar of salt that had once been King Albus.

  The swiftness and finality with which fate—or the heavens?—obliterated Albus set Quintus’s hands trembling. The world had changed in mysterious ways. Where had the bound woman on the altar gone? Why was he still breathing? He’d thrown away his life in a futile attempt to stab his own kin and perhaps spare the woman from certain death, knowing full well the soldiers would take him down.

  Somehow, he’d survived, and the struggling redhead had disappeared.

  A clamor rose off to the right, beneath a torn fold of tent where sunlight now flooded its golden rays onto the woman who’d stolen his heart. His tremble eased, giving way to tense muscles and a quickened pulse.

  Orelea pressed a knife against Maynya’s throat.

  “Cut the witch up!” someone shouted.

  “Burn her at the stake!” cried another.

  “No,” Orelea hissed. “The king should decide her fate! What say you, Quintus?”

  Everyone turned to him for direction. With pinched faces and clenched fists, shouts of “Tell us the verdict,” and “We’ll put her down,” they left little doubt what answer they wanted to hear.

  Distracted by emotions stoked to a bonfire, he couldn’t at first understand why a sister who had habitually treated him with disdain would now grant him the right to choose Maynya’s life or death. The vague realization he’d inherited power came slowly. “Release her!” Panic spurred his cry, not entitlement.

  “No! She’s a witch!” Orelea held her knife so tight against Maynya’s throat a thin line of blood trickled down to stain the upper bodice of the widowed bride’s wedding dress. Always a woman who disregarded those wishes not to her liking, his sister had reverted to form at the worst possible time.

  In contrast to Orelea’s crazed expression, Maynya maintained a singular focus on Quintus, gazing at him not with fear in her eyes but a pressed-lip purpose he couldn’t decipher.

  He glanced around the tent, desperate to find an ally. The knife in his hand would do little good against an angry throng bent on vengeance. Whatever authority he now possessed hadn’t slowed Orelea from taking matters into her own hands. The others revealed similar disregard in their scowls. Having been away for several years, he’d lost whatever bond he might once have had with these people.

  Did Acanthus remember the comradeship they’d shared during boar hunts back in happier times? The sandy-haired soldier averted his gaze.

  Or Titus…surely, he—

  No. This once fellow carouser scalded him with burning eyes. Whatever lingering friendliness he possessed had disappeared into the deepening furrows of his forehead.

  Quintus flinched. If his friends offered no support, what help could he expect from an enemy? His fist-clenched rivals seemed ready to drag him next to Maynya and skin them together.

  The dark-bearded brute, Phineas, moved a hand to the sword sheathed at his side. This furious man would no doubt rally the soldiers to—

  Wait. Quintus came up with an idea. He squared himself and spoke in as regal a tone as possible under the heart-pounding circumstances. “Phineas, we’d like a word with you.”

  Albus’s right-hand man marched over with head raised high, already campaigning in posture for the throne he coveted. “Who are you to make commands? Your brother held you in contempt.”

  Quintus willed himself to stop shaking as he draped an arm over Phineas’s caped shoulders and led him around the altar, away from the others, where they could speak with some privacy. “At least half this kingdom will follow my command, friend. Tell me now. Wouldn’t you want them to stand down?”

  The parry deflated Phineas’s puffed chest. He squinted into Quintus’s eyes, no doubt searching for the lie behind the words he’d just heard. “Speak more plainly.”

  “I’ll take Maynya and be on my way. The kingdom is yours.” But could he do that, leaving the palace in worse hands than Albus’s? What would become of the slave brides?

  Maybe his uncertainty showed. As they stared each other down, the narrow-eyed distrust in Phineas’s expression failed to dissipate.

  “And I’ll have your support?” Phineas said.

  “Only up to a point. I won’t serve in your army.” More than likely, he’d come back with a band to fight the army, but he tried to hide the notion from his expression.

  “I wouldn’t have you,” Phineas barked. “Tell everyone I’m the rightful king, and you can leave with any whore in this tent except one.”

  Quintus offered his hand. “Are you saying we have a bargain?”

  Phineas glanced at Maynya, who still held steady despite Orelea’s knife. “No. You don’t get the witch until we finish with her. You can bury her broken bones before you leave.” But he spoke with enough of a tremor in his voice to reveal a shadow of fear lurking behind his bravado.

  Quintus pressed the advantage. “Where’s your birthright? Once these people calm down, they’ll remember tradition and turn on you, unless the king’s true successor endorses you.”

  Maynya’s deeply focused stare r
aised the hairs on the back of his neck. He was missing something. What had she just mouthed to him?

  Still holding the blade with one hand, Orelea twisted Maynya’s arm behind her back with the other. Maynya winced but repeated her silent message.

  He read her lips—rats. What was the context?

  Phineas sneered. “She dies, you leave, and I rule. That’s the only bargain I’ll strike. The soldiers are behind me, Quintus.”

  Quintus raced his mind for associations and came up with a simple one—rats and fear. Might Phineas be afraid of rats? He’d heard rumors about an incident some time ago.

  Only a great show of confidence could carry the moment, combined with a bluff. The day a captive bride could save herself by conjuring anything at all would be the day the sun rose in the west. Quintus spread his hands. “I’d try killing Maynya myself if I didn’t think she’d summon every rat in the kingdom to sink their teeth into my flesh.”

  The worry lines in Phineas’s forehead deepened.

  Quintus closed in for the kill. “I’m offering to rid you of a burden as a gesture of peace between us. If you let me take Maynya alive, you’ll never set eyes on her again.”

  Phineas shot a look of pure hatred toward Maynya. He took Quintus’s hand in a rough grip and shook. “Tell my people who their new ruler is. Then get that whore of a witch out of my sight!”

  Quintus raised his arms. “Everyone!”

  The muttering mob quieted. Gentry, visiting princes, merchants, and their women, all dressed in wedding finery but contorting their faces into murderous scowls. They couldn’t be trusted to wait long.

  “Albus chose wisely in selecting Phineas as his successor,” Quintus said. “I am a mere soldier cut in the wrong cloth to serve as your king.”

  The small group of brides in attendance lowered their heads. They must have thought he’d betrayed them.

  With strengthening resolve to return for them after resolving the immediate crisis, Quintus pressed on. “I’ll rid this witch from your hands and step down in favor of a worthy ruler, my good friend Phineas.”

  He stepped into the gathering with bated breath. The soldiers and gentry shifted aside to let him pass, but he met fierce resolve in Orelea’s eyes.