The Atlas Six

by Olivie Blake

  “A princess in a tower,” Parisa corrected, reaching up to brush the fabric of his collar. An intimate gesture, to remind him of their intimacy. “But princesses can be monstrous at times.”

  “You say that like a compliment.”

  He leaned into her touch, perhaps instinctively.

  “Of course.” She offered up a delicate smile. “I want you to let me in again.”

  “So you’re seducing me?”

  “Always.” Her smile broadened. “There are times when I think I may enjoy your seduction most of all.”

  “Mine, among so many others?” He sounded languid, unbeguiled.

  She arched a brow. “Is that jealousy?”

  “No. Disbelief.” His smile in reply was thin. “There is only so much to gain from me.”

  “Nonsense, I have plenty. But I wouldn’t say no to more,” she said, rising to her feet.

  She stepped in front of him, pairing their feet like corresponding pieces and matching her hips to his. He set his hands on her waist, gingerly. With the sense that he could retract them if necessary, only she doubted he would.

  “Everyone has blind spots,” she said. “Things others can see that they can’t.”

  She slid his dark hair from his forehead, brushing his temples, and he closed his eyes.

  “Five minutes,” he finally said.

  She leaned forward, touching her lips lightly to his in compensation.

  “Five minutes,” she agreed, and his hands tightened on her hips, anchoring her in place.

  Entering his mind with permission was both easier and more difficult than before. She opened her eyes to a lobby, somewhere sterile and glassily white. There was an empty receptionist desk, a lift. She pushed the button, waiting. The doors opened with a ding, revealing nothing. Parisa watched her own reflection from the elevator walls as she stepped inside, facing the buttons.

  There were countless. She grimaced; unfortunate. She could guess a numeric floor (and then another and another and several into perpetuity, rapidly deteriorating her frothy five minutes) but this was not the way to find herself back where Dalton’s subconscious had brought her before.

  Here he was neatly organized, which meant these were his accessible thoughts. He was the usual occupant in the lift, hitting buttons to access various levels of memory and thought.

  She hit a random floor—2,037—and felt the lift lurch to use.

  Then she pried the doors brutishly open, slipping through the narrowest possible crevice. Magic could keep her from falling, but she didn’t bother to secure her footing. The construction of this part of him was deliberate, the result of survival techniques and psychological coping mechanisms, like anyone’s mind. Cognitive thought looked different from person to person; Dalton’s was more organized than most, but it was still nothing more than a carefully manufactured illusion. If she intended to get where she was going, she would invariably have to fall.

  She tipped backwards from the lift, closing her eyes to collapse into empty air. It would only feel like falling to her, registering more like a headache to Dalton. She would pulse somewhere behind his brow, mounting pressure below his sinuses. With his permission she would be met with fewer guards, less opposition, but as to whether she would find her destination—

  She slowed suddenly, paralyzed mid-fall, and opened her eyes.

  “You’re back,” said the younger version of Dalton, rising greedily to his feet at the sight of her. She was suspended midair, Snow White in her invisible coffin, and he stroked two fingers over her cheeks, her lips. “I knew you would be.”

  Parisa jerked out of stillness, falling onto the hard wooden floors of the castle where she had been before, and turned her head to find Dalton’s shoes beside her. He wore motorcycle boots with black jeans, like a caricature of his external academic, and she looked up, cataloguing him piece by piece. The crown jewel was a fitted t-shirt, so white and crisp it gleamed.

  He knelt down beside her, observing her through narrowed eyes.

  “What’s he doing?” asked Dalton.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Research.”

  “Not him,” Dalton said, waving a hand. “I know what he does. I meant him.”

  She braced herself. “Atlas?”

  Dalton rose to his feet, suddenly irritable. He was prickly, agitated by something.

  “He’s coming,” he said. “I can feel him getting closer.”

  “Who?”

  Dalton glared at her. “You’re here for the wrong reasons.”

  Parisa sat up on her elbows, watching him pace.

  “What are the right reasons?”

  “You want answers. I don’t have answers. I have questions, I have research unfinished, I WANT OUT,” Dalton’s spectral self suddenly shouted, pivoting to slam a fist into the castle wall.

  Parisa winced, expecting stone, but the appearance of it only warped; revealing cool, finished steel before smoothing over, the castle image rippling back into view.

  She blinked, wondering if she’d imagined it, but then Dalton was at her side again, crouching down to take her face in one hand.

  “I made the castle for you,” Dalton said, eyes wide and manic, his voice soft.

  Then she felt a lurch, something dragging her backwards until she was in the reading room again, the real Dalton’s fingers painfully tight on her waist.

  Beads of sweat had formed on his forehead, condensation around the surface of his temples. “You were difficult to remove.”

  She was panting a little herself, drained by the effort. “Painful?”

  “Very. Like a barb.”

  “I’m sorry.” She stroked his brow, soothing it, and he leaned gratefully against her shoulder.

  Their breaths syncopated, pulses gradually finding common ground. It took a few moments to slow, to loosen the magic coursing through both their veins, finally allowing their separate parts to settle. Easier to exist in reality, corporeal among the usual dimensions. Nothing to fight with her in his arms, her fingers coiled in his hair.

  Eventually the effort at being other faded away, settling into stillness.

  Dalton’s voice, when he spoke, was coarse with confession. “What did you find?”

  Nothing.

  No, not nothing. Nothing she could explain, which was worse. Always difficult to admit when something remained out of reach.

  “What does the library show you?” asked Parisa instead, easing away to look at him. “There’s something here that only you can access.”

  She could see immediately that he wasn’t going to tell her.

  “Dalton,” she began, but was promptly interrupted.

  “Miss Kamali,” came Atlas’ buttery baritone. “I was hoping to find you.”

  Dalton moved to release her, stepping away with an averted glance as Parisa revolved in place, finding Atlas in the doorway of the reading room. He beckoned her with a barely perceptible motion, not bothering to acknowledge Dalton.

  “Come,” he said. “Let’s take a walk.”

  There was a tug to her thoughts, lassoed like a command. She would clearly be walking whether she wished to or not.

  She pursed her lips, displeased.

  “Fine,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at Dalton, who stood with his arms folded again. Lacking any reaction from him, she plucked her book from the table and followed Atlas, who led her into the corridor.

  “Am I being scolded for my misbehavior?”

  “No,” Atlas said. “You’re free to pursue whatever recreation you wish.”

  She glanced up at him, suspicious. “Is that supposed to feel like freedom?”

  “I know where you were, what you were doing.” He slid a pointed look at her. “You can’t use that much magic and expect me not to notice.”

  “Is your surveillance a personal favor, or do you watch all of us equally?”

  “Miss Kamali.” Atlas slowed to a halt, pausing before they reached the door to the garden. “Surely you don’t need me to tell you
the uniqueness of your gift. You will have observed several times by now, I’m sure, that your skills far exceed those of other telepaths.”

  “I have observed it, yes.” She wasn’t Libby. She did not need to be informed of her talent. She was clever enough to sort it out for herself.

  “But surely you must also understand that you are not the first to possess such ability.”

  He left the remainder of his intentions unspoken.

  “So I should consider you my equal?” she prompted him, half-daring him to argue.

  “I had thought us kindred spirits. Or rather, I suppose I’d hoped it.” Atlas lingered in the doorframe, casting a glance over the greenery outside.

  “Do you think me an enemy?” he asked her, directing the question outward.

  “I think your presence much too reliable to be coincidence,” she replied, adding, “You pulled me out of Dalton’s head once before.”

  “You shouldn’t have been there.”

  She bristled. “But your presence in his thoughts is acceptable?”

  “Miss Kamali, there is no point pretending we are not the same,” Atlas told her, finally conceding to arrive at his point. “We are both telepaths, talented ones. Rarities.” A pause. “What we do is not unlawful surveillance so much as unwilling access. I feel disruptions in thought, just as you must feel them yourself.”

  Surely there was more to it. “And?”

  “And,” he confirmed, “you are a frequent disruption.”

  “Is that what being a Caretaker means?” she mused. “Quieting disruptions?”

  Atlas faced her fully now, his effort at languor cast aside.

  “I care for the Society,” he said. “Of which you are not currently a member.”

  “Not until I conspire to kill someone,” Parisa said.

  “Yes.” Atlas’ confirmation was stony, unflinching. “Not until then.”

  She felt her mouth tighten, curiosity warring with her more mutinous impulses.

  “You interfered with the outcome of Dalton’s class, didn’t you?” she asked. “You intervened to save him.”

  “Dalton has also intervened,” Atlas pointed out. “It’s human nature.”

  “Yes, but your intervention was purposeful, intentional. His was—”

  “His was no less intentional.”

  She thought of Atlas’ desperation and compared it to Dalton’s, measuring them against each other.

  “Why Dalton?”

  “Why you?”

  They were squared off defensively, which was unwise. A seductress by nature, Parisa understood the fruitlessness of combat compared to subtler methods of resolution. She eased her posture, leaning against the wall behind her to relieve the tension between them.

  “You don’t like me,” Parisa guessed aloud, and Atlas’ mouth tightened.

  “I neither like nor dislike any of you. I know nothing of who you are,” he said with a rare glimpse of impatience, “only of that which you are capable.”

  “Do my capabilities threaten yours?”

  “You do not threaten me,” he assured her.

  She eyed him for a moment, transitioning to thought.

  What is this Society?

  His reply was perfunctory and clipped. Defenders of all human knowledge.

  Do you really believe that?

  It was difficult to lie via telepathy. Thoughts consisted of various materials, and lies were flimsy, easy to see through. The flaws in them were always tactile, either like gauze for the inept or like glass from the proficient: unnaturally still.

  “No one who takes the initiation oath does so in vain,” said Atlas.

  Answer the question.

  He fixed her with a glance, mouth twisting. Not a smile, but wry enough.

  I would not have spilled blood except for something I believed unquestionably.

  It was not the answer she expected, though she had little time to consider it.

  “Go to the library,” Atlas said, unsteadying her for a moment.

  “What, now?” she asked, taken aback.

  “Yes, now.” Atlas ducked his head in something half-bow, half-tip of a hat.

  He turned, retreating to the corridor that served as the house’s primary artery, but paused after a step, turning over his shoulder.

  “Whatever you hope to find in Dalton, Miss Kamali, it will only be to your detriment,” he said. “Seek it if you wish, but as with all knowledge, whatever follows will be yours to bear alone.”

  Then he departed, leaving her to take to the stairs, still buried in her thoughts.

  It wasn’t a long walk. By now it was one she took frequently. She paused to brush the walls, strumming the wards like harp strings. Nothing amiss.

  She stepped into the library, unsure what she would find, and discovered upon entry…

  Nothing.

  Certainly nothing terribly out of the ordinary. Tristan sat at the table, sipping tea. Libby was on the sofa, staring into the flames in the hearth. Nico and Reina were standing near the window, glancing outside. The roses were beginning to bloom.

  Parisa paused to reconsider the contents of the room, and then conjured thoughts of its opposite: what the room did not contain. Perhaps it was clear after all, if one merely grasped that Atlas was not the neutral party he pretended to be.

  Parisa waved the doors closed behind her, prompting the others to look up.

  “Someone has to die,” she said, and added in silence: I nominate Callum.

  Reina didn’t even turn. If the others agree, she thought in reply, glancing irritably at a fern across the room.

  Libby lifted her head, slate eyes darting around apprehensively. “Where is he?”

  “Wherever he is, he won’t be gone long,” Parisa said with a shrug, impassive. “He’ll feel the discussion and come soon, within minutes.”

  At the window, Nico was fidgeting, his fingers tapping relentlessly at his sides. “Are we sure this has to be done?”

  “It will be done,” Parisa reminded him. “And we can either decide on someone as a group or wait to see who comes for each of us in the night.”

  They all exchanged mistrusting glances at that, though a small sensation of distaste was reserved for her specifically.

  “I merely said it aloud,” Parisa told Reina. “Everyone would have come to the same conclusion eventually.”

  “You think we’ll turn on each other?” asked Nico, disbelieving.

  “We could be easily split into factions,” Parisa confirmed, “in which case it would become a race.”

  That seemed to ring true without exception. Already, none of them trusted the others enough to believe they wouldn’t turn assassin once things got dire.

  “Who would do it? If we actually chose someone.” Nico cleared his throat, clarifying, “If we were all in agreement on… him.”

  “I will,” Parisa said, shrugging. “If that’s what’s necessary and I have your support, I’m perfectly capable of doing it.”

  “No.”

  Libby’s interruption both surprised Parisa and didn’t. The others turned, equally wary and braced for the argument to come—murder is wrong, morality and virtue, so on and so forth—but it never arrived.

  At least, not the argument Parisa anticipated.

  “It has to be sacrifice, not retribution,” Libby said. “Isn’t that the purpose of studying intent, unluck?”

  There was no answer for a moment.

  Then Reina said, “Yes.”

  That, apparently, was enough to spur Libby onward. “The texts make it clear that spells cast in vengeance or retaliation will only corrupt over time. If this is for the purpose of moving forward in the library—if it’s even going to have any value at all,” she amended firmly, “then it can’t be someone who’d be happy to see him go, and certainly not someone indifferent to him. It can’t be someone whose soul won’t suffer from the cost of it. The arrow is most lethal only when it is most righteous, and that means one thing.”

  She rose
to her feet, turning to where Tristan sat alone at the table, eyes locked on his tea.

  “It will have to be you,” Libby said.

  It was clear at once that Reina agreed, and Nico, too. Parisa, out of habit, slid unobtrusively into Tristan’s thoughts, testing them.

  Inside Tristan’s head were a meld of memories and visions, a monster of many parts. Callum’s voice, Parisa’s lips, Libby’s hands. They blurred together, inconstant, inarticulate. Libby was right about one thing, at least: It would be a sacrifice indeed from Tristan. There was love in him, too much and still insufficient, twisted and anguished and equal in consequence to fear. It was a type of love Parisa had seen before: easily corruptible. The love of something uncontrollable, invulnerable. A love enamored with its own isolation, too frail to love in return.

  Tristan wasn’t thinking about anything, but was instead suffering it all acutely, intensely. Intensely enough that Callum would feel his distress soon.

  Parisa threw the library doors open quickly, anticipating Callum’s appearance, when sharply the agony from Tristan broke, colliding with some internal ceiling. A little slip of parchment from his head ignited suddenly in flames; curling edges that fell to smoldering pieces, crumbling to ash.

  “Fine,” he said.

  One word for eventuality to surface.

  AN INTERLUDE

  “Most people don’t know how to starve,” said Ezra.

  Silence.

  “I guess that’s a weird thing to say, but it’s true. It’s something you learn. People think they have to be born one way, with resilience built in or some incapacity to burn or whatever. Either you are or you aren’t, that sort of thing. Like some people want naturally and others want nothing, but it’s not true. You can be taught to want. You can be taught to crave. You can learn to starve.”

  Silence.

  “The issue is when you eventually get fed,” Ezra continued. “You’ve heard about the stomach pains and shit when vegetarians eat meat for the first time? It feels like dying. Prosperity is anguish. And of course the body adjusts, doesn’t it? But the mind doesn’t. You can’t erase history. You can’t just excise the wanting, and worse—you forget the pain. Eventually you grow accustomed to excess and you can’t go back, because all you remember are the aches of starvation, which you took so long to learn. How to give yourself only as much as you need to continue—that’s a lesson. For some people it’s lifelong, for others it’s developmental if they’re lucky and eventually it fades. But still you never forget it, how to starve. How to watch others with envy. How to silence the ache in your soul. Starvation is dormancy, isn’t it? The mind still hungers even when the body adjusts. There’s tension, always. Survival only requires so much but existence, completion, that becomes insatiable. The longer you starve the more haunting the ghost of starvation. After learning to starve, when someone finally gives you something you become a hoarder. You hoard. And technically that’s the same as having, but it isn’t, not really. Starvation continues. You still want, and wanting is the hard part. You can learn to starve but you can’t learn how to have. Nobody can. It’s the flaw in being mortal.”