by J. M. Frey
It breaks his heart, just a little.
When Forsyth is done, Elgar reaches up, grabs his creation’s hand, and squeezes it gently. “Thank you,” he says, meaning a lot more than just the hair gel, and the fussing, and the dagger. “I’m glad I met you.”
Forsyth scowls. “Don’t talk as if your death is ensured,” he says, shaking his fingers out of Elgar’s. Every time they touch, flesh-to-flesh, there’s a sort of low-buzzing electrical current that runs between them. Elgar pretends that this is what Forsyth’s trying to escape when he steps back.
“I just mean . . .” Elgar gestures at the small of his back.
“Of course,” Forsyth says, and unlocks the door. He goes through first, and it occurs to Elgar that he’s doing it so he can scope out the room before Elgar reenters. “One must take advantage of those few things that Algar Turn taught that are useful. There are a vanishingly small amount of them.”
Forsyth
Once Elgar is armed, Ahbni hustles us all to the door of the suite, snagging a bottle of water and pressing it into Elgar’s hands as we file out the door and toward the elevators. Elgar is busy chatting with Kashif the Handcuffed Techie, a poor attempt at a companionable smile stretched across his face to mask his terror. Pip is concerned with checking the lay of her sword, tightening her belt, verifying that her boots are double-knotted. I do as I always do before a fight: I breathe deep, try to center myself, eyes and ears open and heart trembling.
For make no mistake, we are on the eve of battle now.
If the Viceroy plans to strike, he will do it now. No time is better than when Elgar is the least protected and the most visible. This panel is being viewed by five thousand fans in attendance and millions more on the video livestreaming service. And the Viceroy has always loved an audience.
I just wish I had more access to my magics. I am not, however, entirely without my own tricks. I have had the opportunity to watch many television shows and fantasy films about magics and monsters since my arrival in the Overrealm. I have picked up a few ideas.
I reach out and grasp Pip’s hand as we exit the elevator and cross the foyer to the escalators that will take us down to the main convention space and thence the ballroom. She looks at me, startled, as under my breath I begin to Speak Words of Protection, of Shielding, and every other charm I can think of. I hold my hand over my mouth, breathing the Words into my palm, feeling them condense and ball against my skin.
When we reach the escalators, Ahbni steps on first, followed by Kashif, Elgar, me, and then Pip. I hold the ball of Words tight in my fist, and then swiftly, gently, press them into the bare skin on the back of Elgar’s neck.
“Ah! That’s cold!” Elgar says, jumping and turning around to look at me. “What did you—?”
“Don’t touch it,” I say. “And let us hope that the Words remain while I am not in contact with you. Pip, don’t let go of my hand.”
“Right, okay,” she says. My wife is clever. She understands why.
I look up from our small tête-à-tête to find Ahbni watching us with slitted eyes, thoughtful and curious. She says nothing, keeping her own council for now. It occurs to me that we are going to have to be straight with her eventually. If things get dangerous, she deserves to know why. She deserves to know what we will be fighting, what she will be running from, if I have any say in the matter.
Unlike the rest of the crowd that files forward when they step off the escalator toward the large set of doors marked “Grand Ballroom” on the far side of a long, table-scattered hall, Ahbni doubles back and leads us to a small room underneath and behind the escalator. This door is marked with ConClusion signage that tells me that it is the “Green Room,” and when we enter, there are a half-dozen round tables with chairs already populated by three other guests and their three matching handlers. I recognize one as a famous actress from a major comic book film, but have no clue who the other two are. Pip does know them, though, for her eyes narrow at them both, and I can see her fighting the urge to go over to speak to one of them. By the set of her shoulders, I assume it will be an unpleasant conversation. But we haven’t time.
“Last chance for a visit to the potty, or to grab a nibble?” Ahbni asks as we pass a long table strewn with pre-wrapped sandwiches, cans of soda, and snack bars.
Elgar shakes his head, and, as if him declining were the flag at the start of a car race, Ahbni spins on her heel and heads directly for a door at the rear of the room. “This will take us the back way to the ballroom,” she explains, ushering us through.
It is narrow, filled with piles of unused chairs and the scent of concrete dust. The walls are windowless, and the corridor is lit with harsh, buzzing fluorescent lights that make Pip wince. We shuffle along single file. I severely dislike the way this limits my visibility, for I cannot see around the corners. Pip doesn’t like it, either; I can tell by the way her palm starts to grow damp and clammy with fear-sweat in mine. At the head of the line, I can see Ahbni texting, most likely announcing our arrival to volunteers on the other end.
We hit a roadblock in the form of a small mountain of piled cardboard boxes. They are clustered around a doorway, half-piled up a slight ramp that probably heads to a loading dock.
“Oh, yeah,” Pip sighs, rolling her eyes as we all squeeze past this obstacle. “’Cause that’s both fire safe and accessible.”
The corridor eventually opens into a small staging room, carpeted with something hideous and orange, and boxed in with walls of what appears, to my inexpert eye, to be technical equipment for a theater. The computers are similar to those I have at home, but beyond that, all the other wires and baubles and devices are completely incomprehensible. I feel a pull toward them, my natural curiosity piqued, but I do not have time to pursue it.
If we get out of this—when we get out of this—I may consider volunteering with my local community theater group. I’ve seen the posters for auditions on the wall of the coffee shop; perhaps they could use a hacker to run their microphones and lights?
Ah, but I am getting ahead of myself, I decide.
Kashif sets down the case and unlocks himself from it, then waves Elgar over to wire him up with a personal microphone. I watch carefully to ensure that the nervous young man doesn’t slip anything else into Elgar’s pocket, like a spell-pouch, or a rune-scroll.
By my side, Pip is occupied with talking to a young man in a wheelchair, who is coming down the ramp that leads up to, I assume, the wing of the stage. When he reaches the bottom, Pip introduces us all, and Ahbni stands back, eyes on Elgar and her phone, equally.
Then we are leaving Kashif and his case behind to begin the setup, and follow the lad in the wheelchair up to the stage. I see no monsters laying wait, no summoning circles scratched into the hardwood or painted with blood. The Viceroy is not skulking amid the black curtains at the back of it. But the space is filled with many places to hide weapons and bombs. It is high. It soars above us by at least two stories, and the catwalks above are corseted with ropes, and lights, and nooks that I do not have any good excuse to explore. I could bully my way onto them, behave as Kintyre does and simply walk over to the ladder, ignore anyone who tells me that I cannot climb it.
But I dare not release Pip’s hand and break the spell of protection I’ve cast over Elgar. Pip looks up at me in knowing pity, and I feel a sudden swell of affection for my wife. She understands how torn I am, without me ever needing to say it.
Is this what Kintyre thought when he looked at Bevel, out there on the road, in the midst of their adventures? This surge of affection, this sure and steady knowledge that his life was safe cupped in Bevel’s hands? Possibly—though Kintyre is startlingly unaware of himself. Had he known all along that what Bevel looked at him with was love? Had he felt it himself, lodged behind his heart as my love for my wife is lodged behind mine, and mistook it for something else? Indigestion, perhaps?
Kashif calls out: “House is open!”
The murmur of a crowd entering the room fil
ls my ears, and I find Kashif at my side, suddenly, hustling Pip and I back into the staging room and from there, through another narrow doorway and into the auditorium.
“Well,” Pip says, when we find ourselves blinking in the bright fluorescent light of the ballroom. She flexes her fingers in my grip. Behind us, the stage is silent and still, the curtains open, a single spotlight on one black leather club chair. “He’s certainly efficient.”
“That he is.”
She points to two chairs right at the front of the room, beside the center aisle. “Let’s sit?”
We are quick enough to snag the seats, and the VIP status of our badges allows us to keep them. This is a good position from which to have a full view of the stage, and Elgar, as well as the auditorium.
“How you holding up?” Pip asks me, and I am pulled out of my contemplation of the people taking their seats around us.
“I think I am the one who should be asking you,” I say. “How is your back? Your head?”
“Sore, and aching,” she allows. “I feel like I could sleep for a week.”
“Soon,” I tell her.
She smirks morbidly, eyes droopy with exhaustion. “One way or another, eh?”
I kiss her temple reverently. “No need to be such a Debbie Downer.”
Pip snorts a laugh against my chest, chuckling at my use of the Overrealm colloquialism, and pets my thigh with her free hand.
“That’s my man,” she says softly. “I’ve trained you up good.”
“That you have.”
“But you’re dodging my question. How are you holding up?” She cranes her head up to meet my eyes.
“I am frustrated, and on edge, and wish I could do more,” I admit. “I wish I had more power. Wish I could drag the bastard out into the light and slit his throat.”
Pip swallows hard. I can’t tell if it’s fear, or anger, or arousal that makes her pupils expand. But she leans up and places a chaste kiss on my mouth, more a reassurance than a gesture of lust.
“Soon,” she echoes back to me.
I am about to chide her in return, but the lights around us suddenly dim, and music is piped over the sound system. Ah, that same fiddle-and-fife tune from my ringtone. I cannot help but roll my eyes at Elgar’s vanity. Even when he is scared for his life, and knows he is the target of a madman of his own invention, he cannot help but brag.
My wife shivers as the music begins, her whole body shaking for a brief second. Pip sucks a startled breath in through her teeth.
“Pip?” I ask softly, squeezing her fingers.
“Oh, but there is magic here,” Pip says. “I feel it in my bones.”
“Then be prepared,” I whisper. “We are about to get our wish.”
Elgar
Whatever it is that Forsyth did to the back of his neck sits like a cold ball on the knob of Elgar’s spine. And yet, the cool chill of the . . . the spell? Yeah, a spell, he decides, is actually comforting. He’s sweating, nervous, the fingers of his right hand flexing as he reminds himself, over and over, not to reach for the knife. Not now. Not yet. And especially not while Kashif is getting him outfitted with a lav mic.
It takes a bit of quick talking to get them to thread the wire up the front of his shirt, and put the battery transmission pack in his front pocket instead of clipping it to the back of his belt, like folks normally do. Kashif vanishes behind a bank of computer monitors, and returns without the briefcase, looking much more relaxed. He checks the lav mic, and lets Elgar know the order of the presentation—introduction by a moderator, walk out onto the stage, sit in the free chair, chat with the mod for a moment, and then the screen will start to descend on the verbal cue word. Both he and the mod are supposed to act surprised and confused, and then the lights will suddenly cut out, and the short film will start playing.
It’s all a clever and dramatic ploy, of course—Elgar knows it’s coming, and so does everyone else on this side of the curtain—and when they’d first come up with it, he’d been delighted with the little show of dramatics. Now, the idea of being up on that stage in the dark, for even a second, out of Forsyth and Pip’s line of sight, is terrifying.
But the moderator is already pushing his way across the stage, smiling and waving to the screaming crowd once he reaches the center. Elgar can’t change the plan now. It’s too late.
Too late.
He swallows hard as he hears the young man shout his name. The crowd roars. Nothing else happens. Nothing blows up; no one screams in horror. They just chant his name like he’s some sort of sports hero: “El-gar, El-gar, El-gar!”
Envisioning himself as a professional storyteller when he was a teenager, receiving his New York Times Best Sellers congratulatory phone call, accepting his first award, deciding what to do with his first six-figure check—none of that was as fluster-inducing and sweat-evoking as this. It’s everything Elgar has ever wanted out of his writing career, and simultaneously abominable.
He wants to step out on that stage so badly. He wants to hear them cheer, see them shoot to their feet and clap, watch their faces glow in the reflection of the stage lights and his own star-shine.
But he doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t want to be bait. And yet, if he doesn’t . . . if he doesn’t . . .
Maddie, he tells himself. Juan. Linux. Forsyth and Lucy and Alis. Think of them. Think of what he’ll do, what he has done, what he could do, if he isn’t stopped. This is it. This is the moment.
“You’ve written about heroes your whole life,” he whispers to himself. “Go on. Go be one.”
With that push, he lifts his left foot, takes a deep breath, swallows hard against the bitter fear pooling on the back of his tongue, and steps out onto the stage. The crowd hoots and hollers with glee, and he just barely manages to turn the flinch away from the wall of sound and the wave of aggressive motion toward him into an awkward pat along his hair and a waggle of his fingers toward the crowd.
“And there he is!” the moderator—Randy? Ryan?—says, wheeling gracefully back and diagonal in a way that Elgar thought wheelchairs couldn’t move. He looks like a cross between Vana White and a Vegas showgirl, and next to him, Elgar feels like a turkey that’s been plucked and set on its hind legs to shuffle on a marionette’s string.
“Hi,” Elgar chokes, and waits as the crowd screams some more before he takes a seat in the black leather club chair that’s been set up on the far side of the stage.
The moderator—Russ? Dammit, why didn’t Elgar listen when they told him this guy’s name?—shakes his hand and gestures for the audience to simmer down. As they take their seats, Elgar scans the crowd for anything . . . well, anything unusual. But there are no golden eyes piercing him, no ominous green watercolor glow, nobody staring at him in stillness while surrounded by the fidgeting crowd, nobody wearing a telltale bad-guy hood.
He does catch Lucy and Forsyth in the front row, though. Lucy looks up at him, her free hand crossed over her lap and on her sword. Beside her, Forsyth scans the crowd, gray eyes darting around the room, up to the catwalk, across the stage, and everywhere but at Elgar himself. Their hands are still gripped tight between them. On the back of his neck, the Words sit, reassuring and waiting.
“Welcome, Elgar Reed!” the moderator crows, and the crowd shouts and claps and stamps their feet again. “How lucky are we to have you at the last minute, eh?”
“Th-thanks, y-yeah,” Elgar manages, and takes a sip from the bottle of water he realizes is still clutched in his left hand. He clears his throat and pastes on his “performing monkey” smile and says, “Thanks for having me.”
“Always a pleasure. So, we’re kicking off this con with a nice juicy Q&A panel,” the moderator plows on. “But before we get people lined up at the microphones on either side of the stage, let’s talk a bit about what you’ve been up to. I hear tell that there’s a new trilogy in the works?”
“Done, actually,” Elgar says, letting the smugness he’s feeling show on his face. He doesn’t add: “Has been
done for years, but I’ve been stalled in the editing process by the terror I’ve felt about writing anything new. Oh, why, you ask? Because I learned that my characters are real and actually feel all the pain I put them through. Don’t believe me? Ask that guy sitting right there in the front row.”
“And what’s the series called? Actually, forget that, what we all really want to know is when can we expect to see it hit the shelves?”
“Book one of the Shuttleborn trilogy will drop next summer, and—” He is nominally prepared for the mechanical whine, but he can’t help the way he jumps and looks upward, wild-eyed and heart leaping up into his throat, when he hears it ring out from above him.
It’s only the sound of the mechanics in the fly lowering the massive projection screen, though, and Jesus fucking Christ, Elgar is almost starting to wish the Viceroy would just hurry up already. The waiting is going to give him a heart attack and kill him before his archvillain ever gets the chance.
“Hey, speaking of dropping . . .” the moderator says, looking up with faux-nervousness and playing along. “Guys? Hey, techies! What’s going on?”
No answer comes from the wings, though, except for the lights snapping off.
Elgar knows that this is part of the game, but he can’t help it. He is freaking frightened. He reaches behind himself in the semi-darkness of the hall and wraps his hand around the hilt of his dagger. Small blue lights flare to life among the crowd—phone screens, he realizes. None are green. Beyond that, only the red glow of the exit signs interrupt the miles of darkness he struggles to peer through.
