by J. M. Frey
She turns to him with a weak smile, until she recognizes who he is. Then her mouth drops into a miserable frown, her shoulders hunch, and . . . yes, she has the yellowing remains of what must have been a spectacular bruise around her eye. Her blue eye.
“Mr. Reed,” she says, inching backward. “I—”
Elgar, who’s been coming down the aisle toward her, stops. It occurs to him suddenly that she might not be happy to see him. That she might blame him for what has happened to her.
“I’m happy to see you, Maddie,” he says, instead, from halfway up the aisle. He folds his hands and tries to look as harmless as possible. “I’m glad to see you’re safe.”
She makes a sound like a half-swallowed sob. Behind him, Forsyth steps up, standing just over his shoulder, wary and watching.
“No thanks to me, I know,” he allows. “I’m sorry.”
Maddie shakes her head, makes a dismissive gesture, but never actually says, “It’s fine,” or, “I accept your apology.” Elgar just stands there, waiting to see if she wants to keep talking to him. If she decides to walk away, he’ll let her. He won’t blame her for it, either.
But she doesn’t walk away. She just stares at him, face inscrutable. “I told the cops this,” she says at length,. “but you should know, too.”
“Know what?”
“The day he left”—Maddie hiccups around another half-sob—“it’s when he saw the appearance announcement.”
“The what?”
“ConClusion, in Toronto?” Maddie says slowly, as if Elgar’s stupid, or slow. Maybe he is. Maybe the meds are stronger than he thinks. He’s heard of people not realizing they’re hopped up on painkillers and doing dumb stuff like grocery shopping before. “They announced your surprise addition to the line-up. He made me monitor the social media around you, and when they said you’d be there . . .”
Forsyth makes a considering sound, and Elgar is desperate to ask him what he’s thinking. But not here. Not now. Not yet.
“Since the car crash, he . . .” Maddie says, and then hesitates. “He thought you wouldn’t get hurt. I don’t know why, but he thought it would only kill Juan. He never explained why he thought you’d be fine, and I . . . I never asked. I couldn’t ask.”
“I’m sorry. Maddie, I had no idea—”
She holds up her hand, silencing him. “He tried to get me to drive him all the way to Toronto. But after the black eye, my dad took my car keys, to keep him from . . . a-and I couldn’t go, so he left. Thank god, he left without me. He just . . . let me go.” She sobs again, pressing her hand against her mouth, shaking and white-knuckled.
“My dear Miss Garcia, you are overwrought,” Forsyth says, coming forward, probably to escort her to a bench or something else gentlemanly, but Maddie jerks back, away from him. Forsyth stops where he is, respecting her choice.
“He said . . .” Maddie goes on once she’s caught her breath. “He said, he never just wanted to kill you. He wanted to do something worse first. Something more terrible. Something that would make you suffer the way you made him suffer.”
Elgar feels all his joints seize up with new terror, dread prickling along his scalp, under his beard. “What’s worse than killing me?”
“I don’t know,” Maddie whispers. “Mr. Reed, I really don’t know.” Then she sets her shopping basket down and abandons the store.
Elgar’s mind begins to churn, but Forsyth only shakes his head, once, when he turns to ask him what he thinks is going on. They’re silent for the rest of their short shopping trip. It isn’t until they’re back at his house that Forsyth says: “Well, he has chosen the place and time, it seems. Now it is up to us to be prepared.”
“I have an idea,” Forsyth says after Elgar’s woken from his post-breakfast-and-meds nap. “But we must include Pip in the conversation.” He points to his phone, which is already on the kitchen counter, along with a fresh pad of paper from Elgar’s office, and a pen.
“Uh, no,” Elgar says, the gummy, fuzzy feeling the meds left in his brain sizzling away at the sight of the tools. “Nuh-uh. Not happening.”
But Forsyth isn’t listening. He’s already calling Lucy, speakerphone on.
“Hey, Freckles,” Lucy says when the call connects. “’Sup?”
“I wanted to discuss an option with you. With both of you,” Forsyth answers, leaning on the counter and his folded arms. Even this looks noble and poised, the perfect distillation of the lordling in thought. Or maybe the Shadow Hand.
While Elgar watches Forsyth—the way he presses his fingertips to his bottom lip as he listens, the elegant tilt of his head—he is struck all over again with the awe that this is a man he created, this is someone Elgar Reed thought up and who is sitting right in front of him. Forsyth, meanwhile, catches Lucy up on their conversations in the hospital, and the one in the store with Maddie.
“ConClusion?” Lucy says. In the background, Elgar can hear Alis chanting, “Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma!” She obviously wants Lucy to stop paying attention to the phone. “Shush, baby girl, I know. Here, here’s your book.”
“’Ook!”
“Exactly right. ’Ook.”
Forsyth huffs out an exasperated sigh at Alis’s word. He must still be trying to correct her baby mumbles, and Lucy is teasing him.
“Yes, ConClusion,” Forsyth says, pulling her attention back to the call.
“Interesting choice,” she says, and Elgar winces. Maybe the dig was deliberate, but even if it wasn’t, he knows why she’s surprised. It’s not exactly the kind of con he’d have chosen to say yes to before he’d met her. “And what, you want to set a trap there? Around all those people?”
Forsyth winces and rubs his eyes. “The Viceroy is already going to be there. We know that for a fact. If we let this opportunity slip by, then we are once again in the dark. We will have to wait for him to strike. And that may result in us being caught unaware, and you . . .” He trails off, looking up at Elgar.
“And if he’s not at ConClusion?” Lucy asks.
“He will be,” Forsyth says, and Elgar’s not sure who he’s trying to convince more—his wife, or himself. “Where else would the Viceroy seek his revenge but during Elgar’s moment of glory in front of his adoring fans?”
“At the screening of the film, you mean,” Elgar says. “Oh, god.”
“But if we are prepared for him,” Forsyth insists, “we can stop him. We can contain him.”
“We can kill the son of a bitch,” Lucy growls.
Elgar would be shocked at her bloodthirstiness, if he didn’t understand her fear of the Viceroy so clearly now. “So, all we can do is dangle me like a . . . like a cat toy,” he blurts, “and invite the bastard to come after me?”
“Yes,” Forsyth says, and then he grins slyly at the paper and pen beside him. “I do have one more thing to try, though. Elgar, you are the Author, yes? You Wrote Pip and I out of the books once before. Maybe you can Write the Viceroy back in. And ensure he stays there.”
“No,” Lucy says, even as Elgar jerks away from the island with a “no!” of his own.
“No?” Forsyth asks, straightening, bewildered.
“No, kill him. Don’t write him back. Write his death,” Pip says, pleading now. “He’ll go after Kin and Bev and Wyndam if we send him back, you know he will. Or he’ll find another way out again. He’ll rip apart every realm there is to get back here. Kill him and end it, like I should have done on the top of the Ivory Tower.”
“Yes,” Elgar agrees. “But no.”
“Elgar,” Forsyth says. “You must write. We have already spoken—”
“This is different,” Elgar confesses, sweat beading on his forehead. “The screenplay, that’s only recounting something that’s already happened. What you’re asking . . . this is new. This is . . . I could hurt someone.”
“That’s the point,” Pip snarls.
“But someone else—”
“Then don’t write about anyone else!”
“I don’t think I—�
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“Enough,” Forsyth booms over them both, and Elgar shrinks away, startled. “Pip, it will do you no good to bully him into this. And Elgar . . . peace. We must try. Do you see? If we can prevent the Viceroy’s plan from coming to fruition, if we are to protect all the people he will be surrounding himself with, the people you know he will be using, like Maddie and Juan, then is it not worth your . . . discomfort?”
Elgar fists his hands and feels shame turn his face red. “I . . . guess so. Yes.”
“Very good,” Forsyth says. He pushes the paper and pen toward Elgar.
“Make sure to write something else into the passage, to let us know that it worked,” Lucy adds hastily. “Like, I don’t know, a chime sounding, or a firework going off, or something? I want to know that the bastard is dead.”
Elgar takes both implements, and returns to his stool on the island. He uncaps the pen, presses its ball to the page, and then hesitates. “You’re . . . you’re not going to stand there and watch me, are you?” It’s weird, having Forsyth there, his creation watching him do something so intimate. It’s like your kid watching you have sex to make another kid.
Forsyth gives him a searching look, and then says, “No, I suppose not. I shall be upstairs if you need me.” He picks up his phone, clicks off the speakerphone, and lifts it to his ear. “Pip? Yes, Elgar is . . . patience, bao bei.”
Elgar nods, and waits until the sound of Forsyth’s conversation has disappeared into the guest bedroom. Then he turns his attention back to the page. The tauntingly, infuriatingly familiar blank page. Right.
Writing is hard enough when he’s in his own office, with only Linux to . . . with only Linux . . . with only. . . . He shakes his head and clears his throat, and forces his eyes down.
Writing to specification in front of an expectant and eager audience is a thousand times harder. Elgar sips his coffee and taps his lips with the pen.
Think, he scolds himself. Come on, think. You can do this. You need to do this. They need you to do this. Think of Alis. Think of Maddie. Think of Juan. Come on.
Jesus, shut up, don’t pressure yourself.
Fuck, Eglar thinks, pressing the nib of the pen into his leg. The pain is sharp, different from the dull ache that still manages to plague his shoulders and neck despite the painkillers. It helps bring his focus back to the blank page. Then, carefully, pen-stroke by pen-stroke, agonizing over every single word, scratching out more than he keeps, he writes:
Though the Viceroy is a formidable villain, he is no match for the will of the Man Who has Created Him. The Writer, admitting that it was at last time to kill off one of his most powerful, compelling creations, knew that the simplest way is often the best. And so, the Viceroy, who had been so dramatic and so theatrical, clutched at his breast. The breath fled his lungs, and he was unable to Speak Words, nor cast any spells, nor flick any air-runes. He could do no magic. He collapsed to his knees, his lungs refusing to reinflate as his heart began to beat faster, faster, faster in his chest, fluttering like a furious caged fairy. And then suddenly, all at once—it stopped.
The Viceroy, the archnemesis of Kintyre Turn and the only wielder of magic in the Overrealm, fell over dead. Never to be resurrected, by magic or science. Dead. Finally, and completely, dead.
The End
Sweat beading around his hairline, hands shaking, his own heart fluttering in the hollow of his throat, Elgar sets down his pen. There. Done. Just to be sure, he compiles his notes and scraps and copies the two paragraphs onto a fresh sheet of notepaper in a clear, fair hand. At the last minute, remembering Lucy’s directive to make it obvious that the magic has worked, he adds:
Epilogue
Over the city of Seattle, a massive cloud suddenly gathered. A crack of thunder echoed between the buildings, a flash of lightning dazzled everyone who looked up at the sky in stunned awe, and a hard but brief rain began. The Overrealm, overjoyed to be rid of the vermin, wept with joy.
“You can come out,” Elgar calls, standing to stretch out his back and work his way carefully through a few of the exercises the hospital physiotherapist had shown him to ease the pain.
“Are you done?” Forsyth asks as he comes back into the kitchen.
“Yeah.” He moves to the patio door, presses his hand against the glass, and looks up at the sky. The hatefully clear, sunny sky. Still, he looks, strains to see, thinks maybe over there, is that a dark smudge of . . . ? No. Nothing. Nothing, goddamn it.
“Not a fucking cloud in sight,” he groans.
“Cloud?” Forsyth asks, and Elgar hands him the paper. Forsyth reads it aloud, and still, nothing happens. “Ah,” he adds, a sound caught between disappointment and resignation.
“But how could I write you out of the books, if this didn’t work?”
“I cannot say,” Forsyth says. “Narrative convenience, I suppose? Or that Pip and I wanted to leave? Or the Viceroy is somehow blocking us?”
“Maybe because it goes against the story,” Elgar says. “I never planned on killing the Viceroy, not really. The publisher had talked about a ninth novel, but after I wrote the eighth, we agreed it was a good stopping point. So he just . . . stayed.”
Forsyth nods, lips pursed, and then, slowly, says: “It was worth the try.”
“So we’re going to ConClusion?” Lucy asks after a long silence, and Elgar jumps, realizing that Forsyth has put the phone back on speaker.
“We?” Forsyth repeats, eyebrow raised.
“I’m coming with you.” Her tone brooks no argument.
Forsyth tries, anyway. “Pip,” he begins, but she steamrolls over his protests.
“Look,” she says. “I hate this whole creeping around the edges of the adventure crap more than ever. My parents can take Alis.”
“And if the Viceroy comes after her instead of us?”
“He won’t,” Lucy insists. “You said so. You’re never wrong.”
“Rarely wrong,” Forsyth says. “It is not always. I would much rather you—”
“I know you would,” Lucy cuts him off. “But I refuse to just sit here.”
Elgar watches Forsyth working this through in his head.
Forsyth presses his finger to his lips in that comical thinking-pose of his, and cautiously adds: “If something were to happen, I would much prefer that Alis grows up with one parent than none.”
“Forsyth,” she says, like he’s being particularly dense. “If I’m not there, if I stay behind with the baby, don’t you think the Viceroy is going to notice? Don’t you think he’s going to wonder where I am? If I stay here, we’ll be doing the opposite of protecting our daughter. We’ll be painting a target on her.” Her voice crackles, which startles Elgar. Maybe it’s unfair, but he’s never thought of her as the kind of woman who cries. “Bao bei. He’ll find me. He always does.” She doesn’t just sound like she’s crying, though. She sounds shattered.
“Lucy,” Elgar says, at a loss for how to comfort her. “I don’t . . . I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. But I can’t help thinking . . . that maybe he already knows where we are,” Lucy whispers, struggling to raise her voice above the lump in her throat. “Maybe my fears are for nothing, and it’s too late. But he hasn’t come here. Not yet. He’s too focused on his revenge. But believe me, Forsyth, the microsecond he’s done with Elgar and . . . and y-you, if you’re there . . . he will come for me. You know that. I will be next on the list. And if I’m here with Alis. . . . If I’m there, and we . . . we lose, then maybe not being here will save her. Maybe he won’t be able to find her. Maybe he won’t care.”
“We won’t lose,” Elgar says, firmly, loudly. He sounds a lot more confident and resolved than he feels. But he can’t stand the sound of Lucy so upset.
“No,” Lucy says, her own determination bleeding through. “No. We won’t lose. And having me there might tip the odds in our favor just that much more.”
Forsyth sighs, and then nods to himself. “Yes, of course. And to be truthful, bao bei,
if I am to go to war, I would much rather do so with you at my side.”
Elgar resists the urge to say something snide. Instead, he rips up the paper with his ineffectual scratchings and jams it down the garbage disposal.
CHAPTER 9
FORSYTH
For the next three weeks, I stay in Seattle with Elgar. Pip returns to school, the fits seeming to have subsided for now—I cannot help but worry over what the Viceroy is preparing during this period of seeming absence—and between Mei Fan, Martin, and wai po, Alis is well cared for, if not bounced around and missing her da. I have never been separated from my wife and daughter for so long. Three weeks without them, and I feel as if I have lost a limb.
But in that time, Elgar’s script becomes an actual film. It is a curious process, to see one’s memories transform into someone else’s art. Though we don’t go down to LA to watch the filming personally, it takes place over the second week following our return to Elgar’s home. I do not feel Readers’ eyes on me, or anything so concrete, but there is a sensation of being aware that all eyes are soon to be on my life. Or rather, my brother’s. The filming is done in an LA sound studio, on one of the sets constructed for another fantasy television series whose producer, luckily, is a friend of Gil’s. It is rushed, according to Andy, and he doesn’t have time to finesse it the way he would prefer, but we are on a deadline.
The week following that is dedicated to the post-production process, where effects and dramatic music are added. Luckily, both were already being prepared for the television series itself, so there is a library from which the artisans can draw. I didn’t realize how much thought and diligent work goes into writing, and filmmaking. I have much more respect for Bevel and what he’s created with his scrolls than ever before, especially since he has no software to help him rearrange and rewrite.
