by Jeffrey Cook
“It could be argued,” Kirke said, drawling out her words to hide how carefully she chose them. “That we and he are on the same side, which is not your side.”
“Because of Rhalissa?” asked the masked boy. “I realize you two know her better than I. You've known her for literally ages. I and mine have only faced her a few times over a couple of years and read what we could in records and legends. Of which there weren’t many. She works in death magic, and in Other-pacts fueled by ritual deaths. That's why she's identified with the 'Soul Witch' of the prophecy. But really not that many legends. Especially considering centuries spent hanging out with Baba Yaga and Kirke Aeaea. She's from the British Isles, apparently, but she sure doesn't seep into their very soil or anything. There's no sign in the records of divine or titanic heritage—from her background, would it be fomoiric? Not sure. But whatever it is, she's got none of it. Just death magic, soul fuel. And I've got to wonder, ladies: where did she get all the people to first get that cycle going at that kind of power level? How many of them were people who thought she and they were all on the same team?” He paused and spread his hands. “You know her better than I.”
Kirke knew all too well. She herself had chuckled a little hearing of the deaths of that little island order from the enthusiastic, blood-soaked slip of a girl. Of course, the passing of humans in their arrogance, their being bled for sorcery, however relatively sloppy, had not bothered Kirke and Baba Yaga in their decision to covenant. Besides, it had been … cute. Kirke had felt maternal with the maiden, remembering when her own niece had gotten herself soiled in blood to achieve her goals, whether anyone liked it or not. Later, there'd been more children who got themselves into—
Her niece. Her children. Destiny. Heroes. She glanced down to the blanket in her lap and let her thoughts trail to how much happier the boy might be if he were just a lizard, instead of caught in between. He'd likely also freeze, but that was still probably a happier fate.
"You shouldn't have tossed the flower," she said, a hand starting to come up.
The Japanese girl started to react, but stilled when the rat who spoke Greek waved her off and answered Kirke. “I'd hoped you'd be into the whole combination-of-planning-and-audacity thing.”
“I always was,” she said, her hands still poised. “But I learned over and over that I do not fare well trusting heroes. They say they're sorry about your nephew, and they mean it, in the flighty way that heroes mean things that aren't their Destiny. And nothing that they say, and nothing that they promise, will stop them from taking your niece and, when Destiny is done with her, breaking her mind to pieces.”
Kirke unfolded the blanket in her lap, making the ram's head on the ancient golden relic more evident. "That is heroes, and still I did not learn for a while. But heroes... they impress you, and then they ask you to help them to leave you behind. I learned eventually.”
The next words Kirke spoke would begin the process, but he interrupted. “Not contesting that right now, because it isn't relevant.”
She paused, curious, giving him a moment more to say his piece, but with her hand still raised.
“I promise I'm not a hero. All the heroes we know are in pieces or in ashes. I'm trying to get by and make deals. But I think the way to 'deal with the matter as it is' is to reverse it."
Kirke raised her eyebrows, then looked him in both eyes. “Well, heroes do seem to be falling left and right. Still, what is there to do? Past the point of heroes, the Otherlord’s rule is written. We should simply enjoy those aspects which result from being on the winning side.”
The boy made a dismissive sound that turned into a hiss through the mask. "Xharomor only has one side. If you don't serve him, you won't be on that side for long. If you're going to cite the prophecy, point out to me where in 'The Otherlord shall rule the Sphere Entire for a thousand years or more' it says 'Except Russia'? Or except anything else?"
"And so better to earn his ire right now, with no time to prepare, and our coven sister as his closest lieutenant?" She started to speak more, but Baba Yaga gestured, indicating not so much to stop, but to wait. Kirke frowned, but bid him to go on and returned her hands to her lap.
“Sure," he said. "Seeing the humans in terror again, not just telling stories to kids, but knowing, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that monsters and witches exist—it must be satisfying. But you’ve got to do what’s right for you, in the long game. What’s a thousand years? When you look, then, around your personal strongholds, what kind of position do you want to be facing the rest of your lives from, if you're even still around?"
Kirke glanced to the old Crone again. Baba Yaga didn't look convinced, but nor was she sizing the bigger girl up for the oven any longer.
Kirke turned back to the boy, challenge rising in her voice. "Your points are not mistaken about Xharomor and Rhalissa. But that does not change fate. Little does. You have yet to tell us what helping you avails us, other than angering them. Destiny is relevant."
"We have a plan," the boy said.
"And that plan is? I am growing impatient."
"I'm not going to tell you the plan. Aside from telling you that we have some signs of hope of another way."
This time, she made the dismissive noise. "Hope? I have less faith in that than I do in heroes. They both have a tendency to die tragically. But fine, I offer you a challenge of my own. If you won't tell me the plan, offer me one shred of hope. This is your last chance to convince me."
"I didn't see any bodies," the boy said plainly.
Kirke's eyes opened a little wider. "What?"
"Your niece. Her whole Euripides play.”
“Yes. She only got her own story, instead of just the role of helpmeet in his, once she was broken enough to break him in return.”
“By killing the children. That's the story people hear the most about her. It's not the only story. And I'll admit that I'm curious: how many grandnephews did you have? A lot of the texts disagree. Two? Five? More? I've read Euripides, but I've read Creophylus, too. Did the Corinthians kill Medea's oldest sons, in the defense of their 'hero' when the boys helped their witch mother lash out? Was there an accident, like Eumelus says? Did she lose some to the mob and then murder the rest? Sounds like nobody had an eyewitness account.”
Kirke stroked the fleece and let the boy keep talking.
“But the infamous version, the version where she gets her revenge on Jason, is that she killed at least some of her children. But let's think about it. There she is, betrayed and abandoned and hurt. She's got a flying getaway chariot, that being normal somehow in your family, but she's hurt, and she needs to hit back where it'll hurt the most. They say it doesn't get much more painful than losing a child. She'd especially know that if she'd already lost some to a mob.”
Kirke stared.
The masked boy continued. “The news that all the kids are dead, that's the revenge she needs. So she could murder the kids. Or she could hide them in the back of the getaway chariot, cover her hands in whatever blood she wanted, and 'confess.' Get the story out there, get the pain out there, and then hop in the chariot and go. Who's to say she didn't just tell the local gossips the kids were all dead? All she needed was the story.”
“You would use your last chance on the twisting of stories, boy?”
“Yep. And I'm just saying there's room for questions here. One of them is how much family you had. Or have, for that matter, somewhere out in the sphere entire.”
And the masked boy's Tainted eye met the Sun-Born's golden one, she'd give him that.
“I'm just saying… you knew Medea better than I... but I didn't see any bodies."
15
The Road
Hrobjart Bjornsson
Hobie was trying to consider how to buy Noriko and Celeste time to get out alive. That was his ad-hoc plan B if, somehow, his brother's whole 'I think your tragic family stuff is neat fodder for textual analysis and commentary on our situation' routine didn't win over the titanic sorceress using,
apparently, the Golden Fleece as a lapwarmer. After all, once Nils went down, the Grandmother of Pain might decide to eat everyone. Nils had decided to play Russian roulette, after all.
Kirke watched Nils for a while through narrowed eyes, and Hobie made sure he had his flower so the blonde witch wouldn't be as much a factor while Baba Yaga was busy with him. He thought about quick, debilitating wounds that limited spellcasting, and not about what the girls would do, in the forest and reduced to two.
Finally, the flashing golden eyes left Nils for a minute to look to Baba Yaga. Hobie didn't figure they were even doing mystic telepathy or anything, just that they knew each other pretty well. He and Nils had once had a five-minute conversation before Noriko'd had to ask them to actually talk.
When Kirke looked back to Nils, she started by saying, “If.” Hobie started to feel relieved, but gods, was that a word that had misled them before.
“If,” she said, “You leave this house a human and breathing, what is it you want?”
“I want to leave this house somewhere else,” Nils said. "If we're going to have a chance to fix anything, we need to make good time."
"In such a hurry to rush to your doom?" Kirke asked, seeming almost amused. Hobie tensed again, having to forcibly remind himself to keep his hand away from his spear. Every time Nils or Celeste insisted on trying diplomacy, it always seemed to give the enemy an edge when the fight started, as Hobie had to go for his weapon. From the stories he'd heard about Baba Yaga, he wasn't at all sure he had a second or two to spare.
Nils wheezed through his mask. “Please. Look at me. If the Academy had survived to print a graduation yearbook for all of us, I would have been voted 'Most Likely Deadweight to Get People Killed.'” He looked from Kirke to Baba Yaga. “My doom was in your forest whether you focused on us or not.”
Hobie was extra irritated that Nils was pulling this in a situation where Hobie couldn't start an argument with him.
“This house is already headed west,” Nils said. “Give us a ride. Give us a chance. You know you want to wipe that triumphant look off her face.”
The old sorceresses exchanged glances one more time. Baba Yaga then looked over the whole room again. “There was—there wasn't,” came the hiss through an iron smile.
Hobie had no intention of even trying to hide his wide grin. “That's the literal translation for the figurative 'Screw it, why not see how it goes?'” he told the others. Whether it was his brother's genius or finally getting a lucky break, they were all going to live a little bit longer, which was awesome. This would have been a terrible place to die.
Kirke nodded and tossed her lap-warmer to Nils. "I'm tired of looking at this thing. And it might be useful to you."
“In what circumstances?” Nils managed to ask, which was pressing their luck, but Hobie had to admit they were all stuck in this house a little while no matter how preternaturally quickly it might move.
“How could I say for sure?” Kirke asked. “Your plan is secret, surely because its utter completeness would leave us overawed. But for one thing, the Fleece is unscryable. Useful for you that no eyes will watch you. Useful for us that no eyes will watch you leave this house.”
So Nils graciously accepted that, and then Noriko and Celeste got him to sit down by the fire. Celeste was clearly doing her best to ignore the presence of the witches entirely, focusing on her tools and supplies—and fussing over Nils's wounds. Noriko did her best to help with the effort, making sure Nils had a spot close to the fire, letting him rest against her while she knelt in meditation. Well, something akin to meditation. Hobie noted she never kept her eyes closed long, glancing regularly towards the witches.
For their own part, the witches seemed mostly content to ignore their new guests. Kirke looked into the fire, hands resting in her lap. Her eyes never closed, not even to blink, but, even awake and aware, she went very still, as if she saw something more in the firelight than the rest of them. Maybe she did.
Baba Yaga got even more of a thousand-yard stare, and Hobie started to wonder just how fast the little house was now going. He wondered if circling back around the stove to see the windows was appropriate for a proper guest who didn't want to be eaten. It would be nice to look, though. Both to best guess just how much longer they'd be in here, and because it probably looked cool, if the house was running fast enough.
He finally decided against it. He might be willing to risk drawing attention to himself, but it wasn't worth risking the others. After all, the entire thing had come down to an old witch's whims, which seemed, to him, something less certain than a coin flip. They had no assurance that another whim or hunger pangs wouldn't hit before they were out of the hut. So he let the girls tend to his brother and did his best to find a reasonable place to sit with his back to the wall and cat-nap. He was pretty certain the others wouldn't even try to sleep in present circumstances. The girls, in fact, probably couldn't. Hobie was going to try a Nils attitude towards sleep—since he wasn't going to get a fight yet.
Footsteps woke him up. The slightly-intentional, too-loud kind of footsteps that Nils had taught the girls to use when they really needed to wake Hobie up. He hadn't slept deeply enough to get into any real dreams, so waking him up wouldn't have been that risky, but it was good that they all stayed in practice anyway.
"Hobie, they say we're almost there, wherever there is," he heard Celeste say. Hobie was up after a few more seconds, stretching his stiff neck a little.
While he was still working the kinks out of his muscles from the uncomfortable sleeping arrangement, his brother was up, covered in blankets, and being diplomatic again.
“Thank you again, Baba Yaga, Kirke. Good luck getting back to the Mediterranean.”
“Good luck leaving enough evidence that someone, someday, may theorize you still live, young man. And if you do find Rhalissa counting the days, I wish you good fortune.”
There were no ropes or ladders or the like in evidence, and Baba Yaga didn't offer any, nor stop the hut anywhere near a tree. She just stopped the hut when it was time, and looked at them expectantly. Noriko just picked up Nils and jumped down to the snow-covered ground, somehow both keeping him safe and out of the snow, and managing to look graceful while doing it. Hobie didn't manage anything like the grace, especially when Celeste, though light enough for him to easily pick up, wasn't that much smaller than he was, but he got them both down unhurt. The hut just turned and walked away. Neither Kirke nor Baba Yaga was in evidence looking back as it disappeared from visual range within seconds.
"So, where do you think we are, anyway?" he asked.
"Pretty certain we're in Finland," Nils said, glancing about. "At a guess, she took us right to the Russian border."
"That would make sense," Celeste agreed. “So what are we going to do? Find enough trees to build another boat?”
“No time. Let's think roads. There should be one near here," Nils said.
Hobie took the lead, breaking the snow up in front of them, while Noriko once more half-supported, half-carried Nils, and Celeste followed. Discussion of turning south and finding tree cover from the wind, and maybe means to make a new boat came up a couple more times as they trudged along. Each time, Nils assured them that it should be less distance and time to keep straight until they got to some roads, even if just those of hunters or herders, before proper streets. Hobie couldn't be sure, from the tone, if Nils was trying to convince them or himself.
After a while, Nils went quiet, just doing his best to keep moving without entirely having to have Noriko pick him up and carry him. While at first, Hobie led the group up hills so that they could see what lay ahead, he eventually found it was easier to make a trail, do the scouting himself, and get back by the time they caught up.
After what was probably only four or five miles, but seemed a lot further, Nils's prediction proved accurate, when Hobie sighted an icy road. While it didn't seem heavily driven and had collected some snow cover, it was still visible enough to suggest a lot ea
sier travel.
"This far north, now that we've found a road, there's bound to be some houses soon where we can stay the next night," Nils assured them, from the depths of the blankets he was wrapped in.
Long before signs of shelter, though, they found an SUV, driven off the road, half buried in a snow bank. The doors were open, the passenger side door, in fact, wrenched partially off its hinges. There was no sign of people beyond a few scraps of cloth and bloodstains.
Daemons had been there. Either a few had made it from Japan across Russia far ahead of them, or daemons had come from the west... and some were already finished with the Gisting Tower. The one instruction they had might well be pointless. Well, at least I'll probably get a shot at Matvei.
"Do we try for the trees now?" Celeste asked. "There's obviously something occasionally watching the roads."
"Not if this thing still has gas and working heat," Noriko said. Despite Nils's previous agreement to give up roads and waterways to avoid daemons in Russia, Hobie noted that his brother didn't exactly leap to disagree once a heater was mentioned.
Some testing verified that there was, indeed, still gas, and the car would start. It did require Hobie and Noriko to tow it out of the snowbank and get it back on the road, while Celeste steered, trying very carefully not to look at the signs of the previous driver.
There wasn't much to be done for the damaged door beyond some careful brute force, but they sealed the truck against the wind as best they could and got Nils settled in behind the drivers' side. Noriko got into the back to share warmth, while Hobie gladly rode spear-gun, as he opted to put it.
Celeste drove slowly, gripping the wheel extra tight. Even her breathing seemed very careful.
