The Silenced Tale

by J. M. Frey

  As the adults refill their drinks, chat amongst themselves, and circulate, Pip settles onto the floor beside us both, watching Alis with hungry, happy eyes.

  “I wish I remembered this,” Pip says quietly, privately. “I have Dad’s pictures of me, but I don’t actually remember it.”

  “No one remembers much from this age,” I say. “Not even folks like, ah, me.”

  “And what are you like?” Nancy asks, moving her chair closer to involve herself in our conversation once more.

  Pip and I exchange an exasperated glance.

  “Eidetic memory,” I lie. “Or very close to one.”

  Of course, I cannot say, “people Written to be clever, who have had the privilege to wear the Shadow’s Mask and so can sometimes access the memories of their predecessors of themselves at a young age.” Not that I could do so now, without the mask to store the memories and provide me access. My external hard drive is missing, as it were, and all I remember now are the files I had accessed so often that I had moved copies of them to my desktop: lists of Words and spells, of names and faces. But little of the personal life of the Shadow Hands that had come before me, of their preferences and memories.

  Their knowledge, deep and vast as it is, is lost to me.

  Nancy squints at me, then at my empty wine glass, where I have left it on the coffee table, well out of Alis’s reach.

  “I’ll pour you another,” she offers, and stands.

  “No, I am content. Thank you,” I reply. “One was enough for this afternoon.”

  She makes a sound rather like frustration, and walks away—finally. I cannot blame people for their own social awkwardness, but sometimes, people ought to learn how to read the situation.

  A shiver of concern trickles down my spine. Why was she so determined to interrogate me? It could be idle curiosity. She has watched Pip grow, I assume, so of course she would be invested in Pip’s relationships and happiness, and as such, only wants to connect with me. In which case, I am being rude.

  But there is something . . . something else here. And I don’t know if it’s my own paranoia, born of Pip’s and Elgar’s own, or if it is really something to concern myself with.

  When Alis finishes her bowl of noodles, she lifts it between chubby hands.

  “Yah!” she shouts in triumph, and I have just enough time to say, “Ah, ah, sweeting,” and snatch the bowl out of her grip before she can spill the remaining sauce all over herself and the floor.

  “Bu!” Alis protests at my intervention, looking mutinous.

  “You missed your grandmother’s dire threats regarding her carpets, but I did not,” I say, grinning. “Now, up, up, let’s stand sweeting, and let’s wipe your hands clean. One last game for you, my dearest heart, and then we will put out the toys and you may maraud and raid to your heart’s content.”

  Mollified by my promise to let her be as Turnish as she likes, Alis agrees to play along. “Yah!”

  “Yes, sweeting,” I correct, hoping to trade on her current amiableness.

  Alis squints and gives me a skeptical look. “Yah,” she insists, in a tone much like a Bynnebakker blacksmith. She looks at her mother, and then opens her hand near my face, as if to say, “Can you believe this idiot? Do you see what he’s trying to do?”

  “I know, sweet pea,” Pip says. “Your da is an insufferable snob.”

  Alis nods, as if she has any idea what a snob is, or if I am one or not.

  Martin moves from where he’s standing beside Mei Fan, near the shrine, to a bundled blanket in the corner of the room. Martin brings the bundle into the middle of the open floor, and Alis turns her body to face him, standing on wobbly legs to watch what her grandfather is up to.

  “Zhua zhou, baby girl,” Martin says to Alis in a far better Mandarin accent than the one I possess.

  Pip moves back to stand beside me, and I rise to my feet so we both can watch unimpeded. She threads her fingers between mine and leans against my shoulder, and all is right and good in the Overrealm.

  Martin unfolds the blanket across the carpet and spreads out all the small toys and trinkets contained inside it so that they are evenly spaced. Alis sticks one finger in her mouth, gray eyes watching this process curiously. On the blanket are a variety of objects that are meant to represent Alis’s future calling. There is a silver pen, which represents a scholarly life, a wooden abacus, which traditionally represents life as a businessperson, a toy car, a child’s stethoscope, a seal-stamp, a plastic spade, a measuring tape, a toy microphone, a small stuffed sheep, and a few other items that I cannot clearly make out from here.

  “Go on, sweeting,” I say to Alis, urging her to uncurl her other hand from my trousers. “Take whichever toy you want. Pick whatever you like best.”

  Of course, no game of “pick the toy” will really predict or determine my daughter’s future. It is fun, but no more real magic than the made-up Words children use in play, or “spells” cast by young men in taverns looking to trick maidens out of their virtue. Still, I mentally urge my daughter toward the seal-stamp, which represents a life in government office. It would be pleasant if she found her calling in serving others, as I did.

  Before Alis has made her choice, Pip’s fingers tighten on my hand. The pain of it is intense and sudden, but the concern that flares up in me is worse.

  Another seizure that is not? I wonder as Pip leans more heavily against my side, sucking in a deep breath between her teeth, eyes screwing shut. I shake my hand free of her rigor mortis grip and wrap my arms around her waist and shoulders to keep her upright, tucking in behind her like a big spoon and trying to make it look casually affectionate.

  Pip is hiding this fit. Why? What could make her want to conceal the pain? She shifts away from my hand at the small of her back and I move it off the scars, holding her hip instead.

  “Pip,” I whisper.

  She shakes her head against a clear message to stay silent on the matter. I look up and around. Everyone is focused on our child, not us. Pip fists her hands in my shirtsleeves and bites down hard on the noises I can feel vibrating in her chest.

  A cheer goes up in the room at the same time that Pip exhales a low, deep breath and goes limp. I am able to hold her up for the moment it takes her to get her own feet under her again. She smiles up at me, and whispers: “Hurt more, but didn’t take me so much by surprise this time.”

  “What happened?”

  She doesn’t have the time to answer, though, for Alis has finished reveling in the cheers of those around her and is looking for the approval of her parents. She toddles over, fists her free hand in my jeans, and holds the other up to me, beaming. Her plump cheeks are pink with joy, gray eyes slitted with sparkling pleasure.

  What she has picked is not the stamp. It’s also none of the other shiny, plastic toys.

  “Show us, sweeting,” I say, projecting a calmness I do not feel.

  “Da!” she cheers, as she holds up a tendril of ivy.

  “I . . . I didn’t put that in there,” Pip says, face going gray, her pulse fluttering hard enough in her throat that I can see it jumping. She stumbles, torn between batting the branch out of Alis’s hand or backing out of the room. She covers her mouth with her palm, puffing hard.

  “Honey?” Martin says, voice dropping into the “concerned father” tone that I occasionally hear in my own words. Martin scoops up Alis, but this brings the ivy closer to my wife.

  Pip flinches. Martin pauses. I reach out and pluck the foliage away from my daughter. She snivels at me and says, “bu!” One of the other guests, trying to break the tension they don’t understand, declares, “Gardener!”

  The room cheers again, and if they do so too loudly, and with the bright falseness of desperation, then no one cares to comment on it. The ivy clenched in my fist, I grab Pip by the wrist and head straight through the kitchen, out into the backyard.

  “Syth?” Martin calls after us.

  Pip calls back: “Be right back! Stay inside.” Martin pauses
halfway to the door, confused. In his arms, Alis jerks and whines, fist opening and clenching, reaching for us.

  For us? Or for it?

  I pull Pip swiftly around the corner of the house, where I know none of the windows offer a view of us, and raise the ivy between us.

  “I didn’t put that in the bundle,” Pip insists, hands shaking where she grips my free one between us. “You have to—I would never be that cruel. Why would I—I would have remembered—”

  “I believe you,” I interrupt her.

  Pip looks up at me with wide, dark eyes that are white all-around with fear.

  “And I am so profusely sorry that I doubted you, or gainsaid you, for even a moment,” I say. “You’re right. There is magic here. Though I do not understand how, or why.”

  “Did I do this?” Pip asks, staring at the tendril. “Is this my fault? God, Forsyth, what if I brought it with me? What if, just by existing here, I . . .” She breaks off miserably. “We should have stayed in Hain. You said so, but I wanted to go home, and I . . . we, we should have stayed.”

  “No,” I say. “No, this was the correct choice. This is where I want Alis to grow and live. Do not second-guess yourself in that. I chose this just as much as you did. I chose it twice.”

  Pip nods, and rolls up on her toes to press a swift kiss to my mouth, but otherwise does not look any more relieved. We both look to the ivy in my hand. It is freshly torn from its vine, that much is clear. The leaves are still vibrant green, the end of the thin branch still sticky with sap.

  “What do we do now?” she asks. “I could ask Mom if she put it in. I mean, maybe we’re freaking out for no reason?”

  “Do you really believe that she did?” I ask her, arching an eyebrow.

  She licks her lips. “I want to.”

  “As do I.”

  “But?”

  “Yes. But.”

  Pip peers back into the kitchen, and I follow her line of sight, craning around the corner of the house. Through the patio door, I can see Martin juggling Alis in his grasp while she sniffles and sobs great crocodile tears for being denied her treasure. Mei Fan and wai po are speaking with him, their gestures indicating that their concern is growing larger the longer we’re absent from the party.

  “Here,” Pip says, lunging for the barbecue grill sitting on the patio under a thick black cover. She roots around the cabinet underneath and comes up with a lighter.

  Understanding what she means to do, I hold out the sprig, and we both watch with grim determination as it burns. Maybe this achieves nothing, but it makes me feel better.

  “Now what?” I ask. In my hand, the twig withers and crumbles in on itself, turning to ashes in the breeze.

  “We’ll go back inside. Finish the day. Keep our eyes peeled,” Pip suggests.

  “Yes,” I agree. “No need to alarm anyone else.”

  “Because whatever this is . . .” Pip says slowly. “It won’t bother with them, will it?”

  “I sincerely hope not,” I agree.

  I wipe away the smudges of soot on my fingertips. And then, together, we go back into the house.

  “Everything okay?” Mei Fan asks immediately.

  “Yes,” I say. “We were . . . just startled. I feared it was poison ivy, you see, and the leaves did not match my, ah, app. Alis seems to have developed no rash, but we will watch her.”

  The other three adults in the kitchen relax visibly at this explanation. The human mind will always seek and accept the easiest answer. It is something I have long learned to take advantage of.

  Pip crosses the room and pulls Alis into her embrace. Our daughter clings to her mother, staring up at Pip with a look that pains me to admit that I know all too well. Alis knows something is wrong, that there is some reason to be frightened, and she has accordingly gone silent and still.

  This is a thing she learned on the road in Hain, and it guts me that, even now, she remembers.

  “Shall we wash your hands, sweeting?” Pip asks Alis, and takes her over to the sink, where both of them are able to hide their expressions from the others. After this, Pip sets Alis back down on the blanket, and the rest of the partygoers turn their eyes back to the center of the room.

  “Sorry for the scare, everyone,” Pip says. “You know new parents. I flipped out, thought it was poison ivy!”

  The room laughs.

  “What’s that old joke?” one of the more elderly fellows asks the woman next to him, who is clearly his wife. “About the dime?”

  “The first time my kid swallowed a dime, I took him to Emergency,” she supplies. “The first time my second kid swallowed a dime, I took it out of his allowance!”

  The room howls with laughter, relieved that everything is fine, and pretending that they weren’t worried. More wine is poured, a few more cakes are passed around, and Martin crouches at the edge of the blanket with a marvelously large grin.

  “Okay, baby girl,” he says, clapping his hands to get Alis’s attention. She turns to him, startled, and then dimples adorably at her beloved grandfather. “Shall we try this again?”

  CHAPTER 5

  ELGAR

  The safe house isn’t anything cool. Not like in the spy movies, with steel-shuttered windows and a locked armory in the pantry. It’s just a little farmhouse whose decor is stuck somewhere around 1973, located about forty minutes outside of Seattle, on the eastern side of Fall City. The house does, however, have movie-spy grade surveillance, a camera-and-security room where the back mudroom ought to be, and an IP scrambler that will keep people from pinpointing his location when he uses his laptop. Riletti and Jackson have explained that they’ll take shifts sleeping, so that one of them will always be on duty. What the goon in the mudroom will be doing instead of sleeping, Elgar decides not to ask.

  All the same, the only security Elgar really wants right now is the sound of Forsyth’s voice and a promise from his penultimate spymaster that this is a problem he can solve. But with the police around, Elgar doesn’t feel comfortable calling Forsyth.

  Firstly, the cops might object to him sharing details of the case over the phone with an unknown stranger (no matter that Elgar would explain that the Pipers were family). Secondly, he doesn’t want to have to use subterfuge and nicknames, and he’s afraid he’s too upset to remember to do so. He might slip-up and call Forsyth by his real name, and with a fan in the other room, listening in . . .

  No. It’s not a good idea. Not yet. Maybe if the situation gets dire enough, but not now.

  Instead, he sits in the small living room, opens his laptop, and considers sending Forsyth an email—wait, is it possible that someone’s watching his emails, too? Deciding that it’s safer to forego the email to the former spymaster, just in case, he spends the rest of the evening answering fan mail and updating his website to clear his mind.

  Jackson is asleep in a room upstairs, and Riletti has just finished sticking a frozen pizza in the oven when Elgar finally clears his inbox. The zero count, in and of itself, is a feat to be celebrated, and with no Juan nearby to scold Elgar for his dinner choices, he and Riletti spend the rest of the evening watching ridiculous cooking shows, eating pizza, and talking around the two elephants in the room: the Incident, as Elgar has started referring to it in his mind, pleased by his own melodrama, and the Work.

  Riletti is fan enough that she’s read the books, but she’s no Lucy Piper. And frankly, Elgar’s a little surprised she likes the series as much as she does, being a . . . well, being a woman. Elgar has always thought his main audience consisted of young, nerdy men. Or maybe not so young anymore, seeing as much of his fan base has aged with him.

  Oh, god, is Riletti young enough that her father introduced her to the books? He does a little mental math and realizes that . . . yes, if she’s relatively new to the force, as her bright-eyed eagerness suggests, then Lieutenant Riletti is literally young enough to be Elgar’s own daughter, and that . . . well, he’s trying really hard not to find that weirdly hot.

  Pa
rtway through dinner, Gil, the producer at Flageolet Entertainment, calls to say he’s emailing over some head shots and would like Elgar’s opinion. Trying not to look as if he has anything to hide, and yet also hiding, Elgar takes his laptop into a corner, along with a cup of coffee (which Juan also isn’t here to scold him about), and peruses the options.

  Along with the head shots, Gil sent video files labeled “self-tape,” which turn out to be the actors speaking into a camera with lines the producers wrote up specifically for their auditions. They’re no more than a few minutes each, but he doesn’t have his headphones with him, so he starts with just the photos.

  They’re looking for relative unknowns on purpose—the production company wants to cast actors for their ability to play the characters rather than the star-magnetism someone known would bring to the project (though that doesn’t mean they don’t intend to use big stars for one-offs and cameos)—so Elgar doesn’t know any of the faces. He has to flick back and forth between some of them to be certain that they are, in fact, two different people. He’s been awfully particular about how each character has to look, and the groups of actors do, he’s pleased to note, actually resemble his characters. And therefore, one another.

  He searches online databases for some of the names, flipping through their credits and screenshots of their other work to get a sense of what the actors look like in motion. Of course, he knows it’s probably a bit too in-depth for what Gil wants; Gil probably just wants his opinion on how they look. It’s even possible that this is just busywork meant to keep him pacified and feeling like he’s a part of the production. He’s never heard of any of his colleagues being asked to participate in the casting process, and he wonders if maybe he’d been too pushy at the beginning, too eager to meet his characters before he, well, met his characters.

  A shiver passes over his shoulders, and after a moment of looking around for a throw blanket, or considering getting up to go put on another pair of socks, Elgar realizes that he isn’t actually cold. It’s just that it’s so . . . not quiet, that isn’t the word he’s searching for. Because Jackson is snoring upstairs, and Riletti has the television on. But . . . Linux isn’t here, fighting for space on his shoulders, and Juan isn’t in the other room pretending not to be mother-henning, and it’s . . . wrong.