I reached for my Walther. “You won’t wake up if I shoot you.”
Lexia laughed. “But you’re about to pass out, T-Moon. Not a good time to commit murder.”
The roomette was really spinning now. I gritted my teeth and pulled the pistol out. “Maybe, but if you’re dead you can’t take the money.”
She stared down the barrel and smiled. “And when my conductor pal finds my body in here, that briefcase full of cash just might be considered evidence. The ConCom’s screwed, even if they eventually prove it’s theirs.”
I blinked away spots, trying to think. But the rattle of the train was tangling the situation. How had I been so stupid. Poisoned twice by the same woman!
Finally the gears in my brain caught, and I waved the Walther at her. “Your handcuffs, put them on.”
“Ah, yes, the handcuffs.” She shook her head, her words slurring now. “I have other plans for those.”
“Get them out or I’ll shoot you!”
“We already covered that.” She settled back into her seat. “Why not take a fifty-fifty chance of waking up before me? You might get the money and save the con. Flip of the coin, roll of the die. I think that’s the properly neutral good thing to do. Me? I’m going to sleep.”
I watched in horror as she made a pillow of her Peacekeeper jacket, settling in for a long night. My brain was shutting down fast now, the red dots spreading into a roomette-filling haze, my fingers going numb around the Walther’s grip. The rattle of the train grew louder, crowding the worry, fear, and anger from my mind….
I got my gun back in its holster just before the darkness came.
Temptress Moon rose up the wall of the Keep, her cloak of weirding blending with the shadows. Her fingers slipped into cracks and crannies, her split-toed boots tickling the ancient stones as she climbed. Iron watch-birds flitted past unseeing, their clockwork insides rasping like a potter’s wheel.
She reached a window, slipped through. Inside should have been utter darkness after a sky crowded with two full red moons, but set in Temptress Moon’s eyes were jewels of persistent vision, and the room sprang to life, every corner sharpened with their facets.
She stared at her victim on the bed, pausing to listen to his breath, slow and steady. He was naked, his arms ribboned with tattoos, hair streaked with green, the bedclothes coiled around him.
The jewels in her eyes revealed hexes of protection scattered on the floor, and she danced closer, like a child making a game of not stepping on cracks and discolored tiles.
Beside his bed, Temptress Moon hesitated. They’d built this Keep together, having slain the glass dragon whose teeth made the rose window of its chapel. Bare-handed they’d strangled the dire wolf whose skull lay in its flagstone, and carpeted the great hall with their bear-killing expeditions in the north. Uncountable creatures fought side by side; it was a shame it had to end like this.
But she drew the long knife anyway.
She raised it high, the marks of old magic shining on its blade. But suddenly the room splintered, her vision fracturing like a spun kaleidoscope, the floor rolling underfoot. Waves of nausea and dizziness pounded against the walls of the world, a roar filling her head like the rumble of a train.
Her victim rolled over and smiled up at her.
“Shouldn’t have drunk that vodka,” he said. “What were you thinking, Temptress Moon?”
She tried to answer, but her mouth was full of ashes.
Waking up was slow and winding. My head pounded, and my tongue seemed to have expanded to the size of a turkey leg. Something was kicking me, and I grunted at it.
“There you are.” Lexia’s voice.
I forced my eyes open and she came into focus, my Walther PPK/S in one hand, the briefcase in the other.
“Crap,” I murmured. The sun flickered through the trees outside—in the east, morning already. I’d been out for more than twelve hours.
My arms and legs were tingling, the life squished out of them. As I tried to sit up, metal bit into my left wrist. Lexia’s handcuffs rattled, attached to the armrest.
“Crap!” I cried.
“No yelling, now. I don’t want to have to shoot you.”
I glared at her, considering screaming for help. But Lexia had been willing to drug me last night, even to drug herself. Risking a bullet to test that chaotic resolve didn’t seem like a great bet.
Besides, with my head throbbing like this, yelling was a painful prospect.
“Why are you still here?” I said. “Why aren’t you at Grand Central throwing money at people?”
She pushed stray hairs away from her face. “Just woke up. Haven’t had a chance to get off, but we’ll be in Jacksonville in a few minutes. Besides, we never did get a last kiss the first time I poisoned you.”
Lexia was holding the Walther too casually; I considered making a grab for it. But the pins and needles in my legs were fading, and suddenly I felt the Taurus PT138 holster strapped to my ankle….
My expression must have changed.
“What?” she said. “Those handcuffs bringing back fond memories?”
I shook my head slowly. “No, it’s just that I finally won the argument.”
“In what sense?”
“This proves you’re not chaotic good. You’re not anything but self-interested.”
She squeezed the handle of the briefcase. “You don’t know what I have planned for this money, T-Moon.”
“Alms for the poor?” I made a fist with my right hand, trying to wake it up. The outskirts of a small town were flitting past the window—Jacksonville getting closer.
“More interesting than that.” Lexia smiled. “A little social experiment. You’ll find out sooner than you think.”
“Can’t wait.” I shook my right hand, forcing blood back into the fingers.
The train began to brake, and more tracks sprang into being alongside ours, coursing like serpents around us. We were almost at the station.
Lexia stood, keeping the Walther leveled at me. She lifted the briefcase. “No shouting till the train pulls out, or someone might get hurt.”
“I’d rather catch you myself, which I will.” I narrowed my eyes, flexing my fingers. “Sooner than you think.”
She smiled, pushing the gun into one jacket pocket, her hand still closed around it. “We’ll see who catches what, T-Moon.”
The train had almost stopped, the platform empty outside. Lexia probably could have gotten away, even if I’d started yelling.
But it wasn’t going to come to that. The moment she turned to slide the door open, I reached down and drew the Taurus.
“Don’t go, Lexia.”
“Sorry, but I—” Her voice caught when she saw the gun.
She let the door slide shut behind her and leaned against it. I could see the Walther pointed at me from inside her jacket pocket.
“Now this,” she said with a smile, “is getting chaotic.”
We sat there, face-to-face in our roomette, northern Florida passing by.
“I keep telling you,” she said. “I don’t have the key. I left it at home.”
“Bullshit, Lexia.” I yanked at the handcuff. “Where is it?”
“But I wasn’t planning to let you go. And obviously it’s to my tactical advantage not to have the key. Didn’t you search me?”
I frowned. I didn’t remember seeing any key, but wouldn’t it have been stuck in the handcuffs?
“And anyway,” she said. “Why would I let you have it?”
“Because otherwise I’ll shoot you!”
“Bang, bang, bang,” she retorted. “Just shot you back before I died. And my gun’s way bigger.”
“They’re both my guns, I’d like to point out. I bet you don’t even know how to flick the safety off.”
“Bet you I do,” she sing-songed, then glanced out the window. “Listen, we’ll be pulling into Palatka, Florida, at 8:18. We need to get this squared away before then.”
“Squared away?”
“No, I want all one hundred percent of it—delivered to the rightful owner!”
She sighed. “Yeah, like that’s going to happen.”
We glared at each other for a while. Adrenaline had taken the edge off my roofie-and-vodka hangover, but I needed desperately to piss. I couldn’t help but wonder if Lexia’s handcuffs would let me close enough to the squalid folding toilet. Maybe the threat of an attempt would make her produce the key.
But I needed to hold on to my last shreds of dignity.
We sat there for long minutes, staring at each other. Either one of us could have started shooting, and the other would’ve been too late to retaliate. But that’s the reality of standoffs with guns, I suppose. If anybody really wants to pull the trigger, it happens right at the beginning.
And there was something elegant in the balance about this situation, something I didn’t want to break.
Finally, southern swamp-Gothic houses began to whip by: the outskirts of Palatka.
“Unlock this handcuff,” I pleaded. “Hand me back the gun, and that’ll be it. We can even take the money down together, if you want.”
“No,” she said.
“Why do you keep doing this stuff to me?” I said.
She leaned back into her chair and sighed. “You mean, why did I kill poor Temptress Moon?”
I nodded. In a funny way, that first betrayal mystified me more than this one. There hadn’t been eighty-four thousand dollars at stake back then.
“That’s simple,” she said. “Everyone asked me to.”
“What?”
She leaned closer, her chest a foot from the barrel of my Taurus. “The game’s called Mayhem, T-Moon! But with you controlling everything, there were never any atrocities to avenge! Your meddling goodness made it boring, sucked all the mayhem out of it. In that narrative framework, killing you was the greater good. Boyfriend or not.”
My jaw dropped open. “But nobody ever said?—”
“Everyone hated Temptress Moon,” she shouted. “People were begging me to kill you for months! I tried arguing with you, wiping out your minions, anything to get you unstuck from that lame alignment.” She shook her head sadly. “I’m still trying.”
I sat there, the gun in my hand wavering for the first time.
“But you just can’t let the balance go, can you? Maybe if I make it easy on you.” She stood and dropped the Walther on her seat. “This is my stop. Give my regards to Miami.”
She took a step toward the door, briefcase in hand.
I blinked, looking at the discarded Walther on the empty seat across from me, then at the gun in my own hand. Why had she…?
“Wait,” I said softly.
Lexia shook her head, put her hand on the latch.
I raised the gun. “Stop!”
She rolled her eyes. “Or you’ll shoot me?”
“Yes!”
“An interesting possibility,” she said, and slid the door open.
She was really walking out with eighty-four thousand dollars of the ConCom’s money—the community’s collective good faith in currency form. I couldn’t let this happen.
I pointed the pistol at her leg….
Click.
Lexia turned back to me, smiling now. “Thought I wouldn’t remember your ankle holster, T-Moon? I remember every one of your stupid guns.”
I flung myself forward as far as the handcuff allowed, grabbing the discarded Walther from Lexia’s seat and pointing it at her.
“Click, click, click,” she said.
I wavered for a moment, the gun right in her face, then sighed. Didn’t bother pulling the trigger, just dropped the gun on the floor.
“So this whole standoff thing,” I said. “It was just so I wouldn’t yell for help?”
The train was braking hard now, a ragged concrete platform sliding past. Not a cab in sight in this tiny station. How did she plan on getting away? I could call for the conductor now, but somehow the screams didn’t come to my throat.
Lexia sat down across from me, reached a hand into her pocket. “Don’t be silly, T-Moon.” She pulled out a handcuff key. “Like I said, it was an experiment.”
The cuff snapped open, and she took my wrist and began to massage it.
“But it’s all over now.”
I blinked. “So the money…?”
“Goes to Miami. Like I said: chaotic good really wants those seventeen thousand costumed geeks gathering downtown. I just needed a little quality time with my old boyfriend.”
I coughed. “Quality time? You drugged me, handcuffed me, forced me to decide whether to shoot you or not!”
She shrugged. “Chaotic quality time. But it’s all for the good.”
So…yes, we took the eighty-four grand down to the hotel owner, who turned out to be more pleasant in person. Just a big fan of punctuality. She served us tea on her veranda, wearing a floral sundress that was all the colors of linoleum.
The convention went on as scheduled, the downtown streets full of stormtroopers, Browncoats, pirates, quidditch players, and Dr. Who sidekicks, along with fresh new ranks of unkillable cheerleaders and Guitar Hero characters.
Not to worry, chaos marches on.
And…no, we didn’t get back together, if you thought that’s where this was going. Are you nuts? Lexia’s fucking crazy.
In any case, her scheme had never been about rekindling our love. It was simply her own very chaotic version of that goodbye kiss we’d never shared.
But one old flame was relit by the trip: I started playing Mayhem again. Anonymously, for now, long hours of grinding every day. And I’m not some lame-ass neutral good paladin this time, but a creature much more interesting. A chaotic evil assassin of the Iron Clan with a cloak of weirding, jeweled sight, and two specialties in climbing. I’m currently questing for the legendary Knife of No Doubt.
You see, my assassin doesn’t want to stay anonymous forever. One day she plans to visit the keep that Lexia and I built together, climb in through that window, and reintroduce herself to an astonished world.
Frakk neutrality. Revenge will be mine.
Scott Westerfeld still owns the original trio of staple-bound D&D rulebooks, purchased when he was twelve, roughly the same time he went to his first fannish event: a Famous Monsters convention in New York City. Since then he’s designed computer games, composed twelve-tone music, learned Esperanto, and ridden in a zeppelin. The geekiest thing he’s done lately was to devise a tactical combat system for steampunk ironclads played with Lego miniatures.
He is the author of the Uglies and Midnighters series, and the novels So Yesterday, Peeps, and The Last Days. But his next trilogy will be far geekier: Leviathan, an alternate-history, Edwardian-biotech, living-airship extravaganza set in 1914, coming Fall 2009.
Text by Holly Black and Cecil Castellucci. Illustrations by Hope Larson.
I NEVER
by cassandra clare
The moment Lisle walks up to the front door, swinging her duffel bag determinedly over her arm, I have the strangest urge to grab her arm and tell her to get back in the car with me, that we should drive home and not come back. That this whole meetup thing is a bad idea. That I want to go home.
But the moment is brief and passes, and besides, Lisle would never listen to me anyway. She’s already ringing the doorbell of the condo, over and over, a manic grin on her face. I can hear the harsh buzz of the bell as it echoes over and over inside. I glance around. The condominium is one of several dozen fake chalet-style structures scattered up and down the side of a grassy hill. A lake sparkles distantly under the gray winter sun. The air is cold and I shiver, wondering what the hell I’m doing here.
At last, the door is opened by a middle-aged woman with curling brown hair streaked with gray. She is stocky, wearing jeans and a baggy sweatshirt with the face of a wolf airbrushed onto the front. She drips silver pendants: pentagrams, Hands of Fatimah
, Stars of David, and ankhs dangling from her neck, a sort of decorative spiritual grab bag.
“Well, hello there,” she says, putting her hands on her hips. She has a distinct British accent. “And you are…?”
“Jane,” I say, and then when Lisle’s elbow jams into my ribs, “Catherine Earnshaw.”
“Oh, right, you’re one of the book people.” She smiles, extends a hand. “Xena, Warrior Princess. This is my place.”
Xena, Warrior Princess? The kickass chick with the breastplates? This woman resembles someone’s weirdo aunt, or an elementary school art teacher, the kind who’s always telling you to “feel” the paintings.
Lisle is grinning. “I’m Faith,” she says. “The Slayer.”
“Then I’d better let you in before you start slaying!” The woman laughs like she’s said something uproariously funny, and stands aside. “You can drop your bags in the first bedroom on the left. Everyone’s in the living room.”
We drop our bags as ordered in a small, plain bedroom with a king-size bed. The bed is covered in bags; I balance my duffel gingerly on top of a backpack covered in Invader Zim buttons. Lisle is already stripping off her sweater to reveal her black halter top and studded belt. She looks hot, enough to get me worried. I didn’t really bring any special clothes, just jeans and T-shirts. But then, all that Ben has seen of me so far is my left eye, my hands, and my feet in sandals. It’s hard to live up to that sort of mystery.
Lisle grabs my hand. “Come on.”
The hum of voices hits us before we reach the living room. It’s as big as promised, with a balcony overlooking a green lawn that slopes down to the lake. There’s a granite island separating the living room from the kitchen, and lined up on it are all sorts of bottles—all sorts of booze, and some soda-pop mixers. Xena, Warrior Princess, is behind the island, mixing drinks into plastic cups. Everyone else is sprawled out all over the living room, and of course I recognize no one. One thing I can say: no one looks like their online icons. There are two skinny girls seated uncomfortably on a couch, staring at each other, and a bunch of college-age-looking boys sprawled around a low table on the floor, rolling dice and arguing in loud voices. There are older people, too: a woman with glasses, knitting in a chair. She’s wearing a T-shirt that says THE HAMSTER OF DOOM RAINS COCONUTS ON YOUR PITIFUL CITY. Some teenage girls with long hair are playing cards at a round table. They look up as Lisle and I come into the room, then look down again, obviously uninterested.
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