“When your people arrived and eventually sailed to the island where the xiren had fled, we said nothing. We half hoped it would lead to your deaths. But all it led to was yet more exploitation of the Elementals. We watched and waited to see what would befall you for your foolishness. As Granny often said, ‘We thought then that perhaps our greatest enemy would become our greatest friend.’ Then, reports came that the shadowspiders were no more and that the trade had dried up. Our elders said then that old Ximu had died at last, her magic unwound by being cut off from her palace of bone too long.”
“You’re talking about Scientia, aren’t you?” Bayne asked. “My family’s palace is made of bone and ancient beyond reckoning.”
Syrus nodded. “You call it Scientia now, yes.”
“So,” Vespa asked, “what are the shadowspiders, exactly? I always thought they were just lesser elementals who wove particularly strong silk!”
Syrus shook his head. “My granny always said that the most powerful of the xiren could take human as well as spider form, if they wished. Her Captains can walk in human form and turn others to do her bidding. And that is why it is never wise to taunt a spider.”
“Ah,” Vespa said. “Werespiders.”
“Of course,” Bayne muttered. He twitched his coat closer around his shoulders. Bayne wasn’t overly fond of arachnids to begin with.
“But they have been thought dead for centuries,” Olivia said. “How could they possibly be here now? Are you certain that’s what the kinnon said?”
Syrus nodded. “Her name was his last breath. And the wound on his shoulder looked very much like a spider bite. While I haven’t seen Ximu myself, kinnon do not lie. It’s not in their nature.”
Vespa noticed everyone’s eyes on her. “Yes,” she said. “So all the bestiaries and codices I studied at the Museum said. Their blood, if it can be preserved, is a powerful truth serum.”
“Whatever the case, perhaps we should send an envoy to investigate and to offer the hand of friendship,” Olivia said.
Syrus’s eyes went wide, but it was Bayne who spoke first. “Your Majesty, I really don’t think—”
Olivia’s glance cut him off. “What, Pedant?”
Bayne shook his head. He and Olivia had argued many times before. Both Bayne and Vespa had sensed a growing darkness in the old City, and had tried to persuade Olivia that danger might be present. But she had heard none of it, convinced that it was merely toxic magic of her father’s at last coming to light. “It will be swept away by the new realm of peace we’re creating,” she’d said the last time they’d spoken of it. “Pay it no more mind.”
“Majesty,” Syrus said, his voice soft and deadly calm, “if indeed we are dealing with Ximu, please do not send someone to treat with her. Whoever you send will not come back alive, I promise you.”
Olivia rose, clearly discomfited. She went to the window and pushed away the draperies with a pale hand, looking out onto the dismal sky. “But surely,” she said, “since the New Peace, all has changed. Perhaps she is different. I do not care if she takes the old City. I have no use for it. I am happy to offer it to her.”
Bayne seemed as though he might implode. He threw Vespa a pleading glance.
Vespa rose and went to stand beside Olivia. Vespa looked out across the new City with the muddy streams of its thoroughfares now running through it. She looked beyond it to the treetops of the New Forest and the green edge of the Euclidean Plain. No longer did a Wall shut these things from her sight, and the beauty of it was breathtaking.
Olivia’s gaze drew her back. “You think I am foolish too, don’t you, Vee?”
“None of us think you are foolish, Majesty. Just . . . perhaps . . . a tad naive.” She winced a bit at having to say it aloud, but there it was.
As if catching her thought, Olivia turned, letting the curtain fall, and took her hands. “You know I’ve always valued your honesty.” She looked at Syrus and Bayne. “From each of you, actually. But if we are to have peace, I don’t see how this can be done any other way.”
Bayne stood and bowed. “Majesty, none question your desire for peace. But as I’ve often said, inasmuch as we desire peace, we must also be prepared for its opposite.”
Vespa glanced at him. His restraint was admirable, considering how he’d sometimes ranted to her in private about Olivia’s obstinacy.
Olivia frowned. It was a tiny frown, barely noticeable as frowns go, but Vespa knew what was coming. “Often have we discussed your admonishments that we have a standing army and fortifications, but I ask you: Do not those very preparations declare the opposite of peace to all who observe this new Empire? I do not want it said of me that I promised peace with one hand and gave war with the other!”
Bayne sighed. “Yes, Majesty, we have indeed often spoken of this. And each time I’ve hoped that perhaps some bit of logic or reason would reach your ears . . .”
Olivia stiffened. She dropped Vespa’s hands. “Logic? Reason? Was it not these very things that brought us to where we are today? What of Compassion? What of Honor?”
Emotions chased across Bayne’s face like clouds. “Those are also important, but—”
“Those are the foundation upon which my realm rests, Pedant,” Olivia said. “See you remember it.”
Bayne bowed his head. “Your Majesty.”
“That does not mean, however, that we should not call a Council to learn more. I know the Council of the Equinox was scheduled soon, but I think we should hasten it. Please convene it. In the meantime I will send an envoy across the River. Whom would it be best to send?”
“If you must send someone, let it be us, Your Majesty,” Bayne said. “We are your Unnaturalists, after all. If anyone should investigate such a rumor, it should be us.”
Olivia shook her head. “I would prefer to reserve your skills in case they are needed for further negotiations. And as well known as you are, your presence may threaten whatever is in the old City. You defeated the Grue, after all. You may have enemies.”
“But . . . Majesty, this is preposterous!” Bayne said. “We are the most accomplished, the most powerful—truly the only people in your realm qualified to handle such a creature. Why would you send anyone else?”
Olivia’s mouth was hard. “Because I wish to, Pedant. That is all the answer you require.”
Everyone was silent, not knowing what to say. Vespa saw that Syrus’s head was bent, his hands resting across his knees in defeat.
“Mr. Reed,” Olivia asked. His head snapped up at his name. “Whom shall I send?”
He sighed. “You’d best send someone you don’t mind losing, Majesty. That’s all I can say.”
“No one is expendable, Mr. Reed.”
He stood and looked Olivia in the eye with an expression somewhere between sadness and yearning. “Whoever you send will be.”
Olivia’s mouth thinned. “I am sorry this distresses you, Mr. Reed. That is certainly not my intent.”
He nodded, and the painful silence descended again. Then he said, “I will go, if that is your wish.”
Olivia half smiled. “No. I have need of you here.” A look shot between them, something that Vespa thought she recognized all too well. “There is the matter of that boiler, after all. Is it fixed yet?”
Syrus blushed. Vespa didn’t recall that ever happening before.
“No, Majesty. I’ll get back to it right away.”
“Thank you. Winter is on the march, so they say.”
Syrus bowed.
Vespa feared Ximu wasn’t the only trouble coming their way.
CHAPTER 3
Olivia sends us back to our townhouse in one of the few remaining carriages in the City as a kindness. I’m distressed that a driver and horses must get utterly soaked for us, though I suppose I’m glad it’s not a wight and animals driven by myth. And that the rain that falls isn’t tinged sickly green with Refinery smoke.
Vespa sees my discomfort. “It’s what he does,” she says, speaking of the drive
r. “And it gives him employment that he might not otherwise have.”
She’s right, after a fashion. But it’s that kind of thinking that allowed so much awfulness to go on before. Everyone turned a blind eye to suffering. I don’t entirely know the world I want, but I wonder, as I look out through the rain-streaked windows, whether I’ll have the chance to find out.
Telling the story of Ximu in that dim room brought it all home to me. The Queen of the Shadowspiders has always been a faraway legend, a being of wonder and terror. The Manticore had been the reality and Ximu but a strange, twisted nightmare of the past. But now, to think that they have somehow reversed . . . It fills me with fear.
I long to know what Nainai would have said about all of this. She liked talking about the various ages of the world, and she was certain that we were on the cusp of a new one. If she’d managed to live, I can only imagine what she would have thought of now.
I often wonder about the others—my cousins and aunts. All those taken in that last Cull. What would they think of the boy who freed Tianlong? How often I’ve wished for the help and humor of all my kin, with so much still to be done to make this a truly working City again.
I looked for them. I truly did. I considered leaving and searching for them. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. Every time I would go to the edge of the City and stare out across the new Plain, I’d just turn and walk back again. This City needs me, and I’m responsible for that need. After all, we woke the Dragon from his slumber and restored his lost Heart to ends both dire and good. The least I can do is try to help build life here anew. And I have no idea where to even begin to find my people. This City has problems I can solve.
Piskel huddles close to my face on the carriage frame and stares out the window too. He keeps clucking and shaking his head, muttering to himself about how if he’d just stayed in his favorite tree that day, none of this would have happened.
“I’m glad you didn’t, though, little brother,” I say.
Hmph.
I don’t think he agrees. But he nestles closer to me, all the same.
Bayne and Vespa are silent, each lost in their own thoughts. I think we hardly know what to say to one another. What can we do if Olivia doesn’t want to listen to our warnings? What should we do?
At last we pull onto the cobble of the one intact row of houses in the City. The sign bearing the winged-clock emblem and the gold-painted letters LUMIN & NYX, IMPERIAL UNNATURALISTS blows back and forth in the rain. I can finally read it after a year of forced training by Vespa. Unfortunately, my attempts to help her read my language haven’t met with as much success. She has no musical ear whatsoever. Can’t hear the tones and can’t write the proper brushstrokes to save her. But I’d never tell her that.
The door is charm-locked, and I let Vespa handle it, since I’m always getting stung whenever I try to open it.
Sometimes it still alarms me how comforting and familiar this place smells, how in just a year it’s become home. I would never have guessed that anything but the clan car would be home. And to have a place that is relatively solid and free of drafts with a real working hearth, a kitchen, and separate rooms is an unheard-of luxury. It still sometimes feels crowded, though.
I move toward my workshop, a room off the parlor that was full of skeletal plants and broken pots when we got here. Vespa said it must once have been used like the solariums in the great houses, a place where you could sit in the sun and be surrounded by exotic plants. Though why the owners wouldn’t just take a walk in the Forest is beyond me.
Truffler stops me. He’s been stirring something on the hearth—another of the interesting dinners he sometimes cooks. He holds up a bowl of dark liquid that smells promisingly of mushrooms.
“Eat,” he says.
In the dining room that doubles as a library, the hob sets bowls on the scarred table amongst all the books and papers scattered across it. He can barely see over the edge of the table, so the bowls settle precariously into their places. He hands out spoons, then disappears into the kitchen.
We sit. None of us wants to be the first to speak. There seems to be nothing to say. Olivia is determined not to believe the seriousness of our situation.
Truffler returns with a steaming bundle. He grins when he whisks the cover off a basket of fresh bread.
“Butter, too,” he says, setting a pot and butter knife out on the table. Piskel’s eyes are like saucers, and he wipes the drool from his mouth, even though his belly is still round with wheaten cakes.
I am the first of us to speak. “You’re turning into a regular house brownie, you know that?”
It’s hard to tell when the old man blushes, he’s so hairy. He shrugs. “Bread makes it all better.”
Piskel nods vigorously.
We dig into our stew. Truffler has a special seat he uses to help him sit at the same height as us, and it makes him look even more like a child than normal.
“This is delicious, Truffler,” Vespa says. “What’s in it?”
“Mushroom. Barley. Eye of newt and wing of bat.”
Vespa’s mouth screws up, and she sets her spoon down carefully. “You’re joking, right?”
We both look at her solemnly.
“Ancient hob recipe,” Truffler says.
“I don’t think it’s a joke,” Bayne says, scooping up another spoonful with all due ceremony. “You know Elementals and their strange brews.” He buries his smile in his spoon.
Vespa looks almost green as she pokes at her stew. “So . . . not all of these little white things are barley?” she asks, looking at me for some reason.
I shrug.
Truffler winks at me. I try to hide my smile.
She glowers. “You are all having a laugh at my expense.” She can still play the haughty prig as well as ever, though these days it’s largely an act.
We can’t hold back anymore. Truffler bursts into snorting laughter. Piskel spits crumbs everywhere, holding his sides. Bayne chuckles.
“Melonhead,” I say, ruffling the hair on Truffler’s crown.
“Well, even if it’s made of the fabled crocodiles of the Apocalyptic Isles, it’s still delicious,” Vespa says. She jams the spoon in her mouth, daring us to poke fun at her further.
After we push our bowls away and Piskel is lying on the table holding his tummy and groaning, Bayne begins the conversation we’ve all dreaded.
“What shall we do now?”
“What do you mean?” Vespa asks, a line appearing between her brows.
“Well, you can’t really plan to just sit here and wait to see what happens! This is quite possibly the largest case we’ve ever encountered, perhaps the greatest we ever will encounter!”
“So you think we should just march across the River and investigate for ourselves?” Vespa asks.
Bayne smiles. There’s more mischief in that smile than I’ve seen in months. “Of course.”
“But Olivia specifically told us not to! She said to call Council, and that she would send an envoy.”
Bayne and I are silent.
“You don’t really think . . .” Vespa trails off.
“Who better to do it than us?” Bayne asks.
“There’s no question of that. But she forbade it, Bayne!”
“Look, we can take a few potions and other defensive items I’ve made. And we can use magic to escape quickly if need be.” He doesn’t mention the thing that is probably troubling her the most—the unreliability of her magic these days. He feigns disinterest by scanning some of the papers near his bowl.
“Still . . . ,” Vespa says.
He looks up at her. “Since when do you follow the rules?” he asks.
They grin at each other.
“Not to interrupt your scheming,” I say, “but I feel I should mention that this isn’t like rousting a coven of vampires. It isn’t even like dealing with the Grue, who nearly killed us all. This is Ximu we’re talking about. She’s been here since the beginning of Time. She can’t be
defeated by simply knocking on her door and asking her to leave.”
Vespa’s gaze is sympathetic. “We understand.”
“But you’re going anyway?”
They both nod.
“Then I’m going too.” Magic or no magic, I’m not letting them do this alone.
CHAPTER 4
Bayne decided that they should go as early in the morning as possible. Though Vespa was generally averse to anything that involved rising from her bed before the sun had risen from his, she agreed that going deep in the night, when the dark powers for some Elementals ran strongest, would be stupid. The dawn might give them at least some magical advantage.
Magic. She gritted her teeth, thinking about it as she gathered her clothes to get dressed.
Ever since she had given over the Heart, Vespa’s magic had been increasingly faulty. It had gotten to a point where she didn’t know what would work and what wouldn’t. One day she could easily manage the flow of etheric energy and could manifest that into whatever the spell required. Others it was as though something in her was broken.
Bayne likened it to an everlantern with faulty wiring. It didn’t happen often, but when it did, the magic that kept it eternally lit stopped working. “You’ve got a wire loose in there somewhere,” he often said.
Vespa still didn’t much appreciate the analogy.
She sighed as she hooked her corset laces over the doorknob and bent forward, while simultaneously reaching around to pull them tighter. Not having a maid for a year had taught her to be ingenious. She could now be properly dressed and ready for adventure in about five minutes.
Vespa wished magic was that easy.
She hadn’t asked for the magic that had ultimately spelled the end of New London and life as she had known it. But when Bayne had revealed that Vespa was the first witch in centuries and that only she could end the slavery of the Elementals, she’d embraced all that, frightening as it had been.
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