Between Family: The City Between: Book Nine

by Gingell, W. R.

  “Then accept my challenge,” he said.

  “Fine,” I said. “I accept. If I lose, I swear fealty to you. If I win, I leave here with all of my friends and you release your minions from their oaths.”

  “Done!” he said at once. “Come through!”

  “Pet,” Zero said, through his teeth.

  “I told you,” I said to him, almost dizzy with fury. “I am not gunna kill kids! If they come back and fight me later, I’ll get them then! I’m not going to cut through ’em as if they’re grass just so I can get to that slimy little git. For once in your life, trust me to make the right decision so that we can save everyone.”

  “They’ll just kill you afterwards,” he said, pleadingly.

  “Maybe,” I said. “But I’ll deal with that then.”

  As I approached, the heirlings parted to let me through as with a single mind, and I saw the blankness of fear in their eyes. None of these kids knew how to fight—none of them even knew how to hold the weapons in their hands. I was pretty sure some of them still thought they were trapped in some kind of nightmare.

  “One of them is your friend,” called the mimic. “Choose well, and I’ll let you leave with him. Choose badly, and all of these little heirlings will have to sacrifice themselves to secure my escape. You said my constructs were pitiful—let’s see if you can tell them apart from the reality.”

  “Yeah, all right, all right,” I said. “I’ve got the idea. How long have I got?”

  “Five minutes,” he said. “They’ll each have a chance to address you up to three times, but I won’t allow anything else. I’ll gag the real vampire if I have to.”

  I heard Zero shift behind me as I climbed the stairs toward the four JinYeongs, and didn’t have to look at him to know that he had drawn his sword. I ignored it, because there was nothing I could do to stop him if he refused to trust me this time. All I could do was hope that he would wait and trust me.

  The silence stretched out behind me as I climbed the stairs and right up until I stepped onto the uppermost step, shredding my nerves with the idea that it couldn’t continue. But it did continue, and I began to really trust for the first time that Zero was going to allow me to do as I’d decided.

  Now that I was up here, I wasn’t feeling quite so assured of that decision, but there was nothing else for it but to keep going. I’d already gone too far to stop now. It wasn’t just that each of the four on the stage looked exactly like JinYeong; each of them had an actual presence in the room—took up space, bent the air around them, created warmth.

  “All right,” I said to those far-too-real JinYeongs, and drew in a breath that was nearly audibly shaky. “Convince me.”

  As if he had been waiting for the command, the second cocked his head with exactly JinYeong’s command, and said, “Petteu, come to me!”

  Number One just said softly, “Naya.”

  I let my eyes run over each one of them in turn as they called out to me. Number Two had called me Pet; Number Four hadn’t used banmal with me. Number Three—well, Number Three was wearing an orange tie. I might have believed it to be JinYeong if it had been a jewel-orange, but it was neon orange.

  I passed down the line of JinYeongs, ignoring the cold gaze of the mimic on the platform behind, until I came to Number One. Then I stopped; just near enough to embrace him, but far enough to leave a small space between us.

  “Aljana?” he said, one hand slipping around the back of my neck while his thumb caressed my ear. “Nal aljyo?”

  “I know you,” I said, smiling up at him. Then I pulled all the pretty pieces of Between from the walls around us and forged them into a long, wicked-sharp silver knife within my fingers; and with that knife I stabbed upward and right into his heart.

  “If you want to make me think you’re JinYeong, you’re gunna have to try a bit flamin’ harder,” I said, my fingers white around the braided grip and dripping with blue blood that stained the honey-coloured topaz protruding below the bottom curve of my fist as well.

  I let his body fall to the ground, my blade slipping free, and the body changed before it hit the marble platform, the other JinYeongs vanishing around it. Even the mimic who had seemed to be standing on the platform above us melted away until there was nothing but the single body—too tall and broad to be JinYeong, his blood too blue.

  “You said the other heirlings would know how to use Between,” I said, turning back to Zero, who was staring at me and the body with the glazed sort of horror I’d only seen once before in his eyes. “You didn’t think any of them were JinYeong, right?”

  “No,” he said, his voice barely a whisper and his eyes still stricken. He dropped to his haunches, raking his hands over his short white hair, and exhaled into the floor beneath him.

  “Liar,” I said. I dropped the bloody knife and ran lightly back down the stairs and through the line of heirlings. They didn’t try to stop me—in fact, they seemed to draw back from me—and by the time I got back to Sarah and Zero, a faint shuffling had begun in the ranks. One weapon hit the ground and was hastily retrieved, but its owner took it and bolted for the door.

  I kept a wary eye on the others as I stood by Zero’s kneeling form, but it didn’t take long after the first one broke rank for the others to start leaving in ones and twos, each gripping their weapon and avoiding looking in our general direction. I didn’t blame them; blood had begun to trickle down the stairs toward them, and for all I knew, it was the first death they’d seen.

  “Liar,” I said to Zero again, leaning against his shoulder and draping my arm around his neck as I watched them go. “It’s all right to take a moment when you think someone you love has died. It’s all right to need a moment when someone you love betrays you, too.”

  “There aren’t any moments left,” he said. “There’s too much happening.”

  “You don’t have time to not take a moment, then,” I said. “You either take a moment now, or collapse later. Your choice. We haven’t got anywhere we need to be right now. Just hunker down there and breathe for a while, all right?”

  He didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no, either—nor did he get up. He just crouched there, leaning on his knees and staring at the marble while I leaned against him to give him time to recover and tried to feel what I could feel of Between around me in the room.

  Most of what I felt was nothingness: a vast, empty space pretending to be something it wasn’t, and devoid of any life that wasn’t in the room we were in. No JinYeong, then, I thought mechanically, trying to avoid the thought that suggested there could be a lifeless JinYeong somewhere out in that nothingness.

  “I can’t feel anything,” said Sarah. She glanced at Zero and asked, “Is he going to be all right?”

  “Yeah, just give him a minute,” I advised. “I can’t sense anything, either. It feels like we’re in one of those rooms for 3D computer games; we could walk anywhere and feel like we’re getting somewhere, but we’ve been walking on the spot the whole time.”

  Sarah made a face. “Thanks. That’s a really comforting thought.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Don’t worry about it; we’ll get out all right.”

  I took a bit of a walk around the room to see what I could see, stopping briefly at a corner that had a funny little clock hanging on the wall in a soft swirl of wall that seamlessly folded in on itself and almost on the clock.

  “Got one of you at home,” I told the clock, then left it where it was and moved on.

  I took my time around the room, enjoying the artistry of it all while it was still there, and seeing the silverish filigree of each of the constructs still slowly wafting apart with each moment after its caster’s death. I probably took a good half hour to wander around the room while Zero silently dealt with his emotions, and when it looked like he might be about to stand up, I headed back toward him.

  I bumped his leg with my knee as he stood and said, “You know I wouldn’t actually kill JinYeong, right?”

  “Of course,” he
said, and this time his voice was certain.

  “I would have told you if I could do it without giving the game away,” I said. “But I knew I’d only have a second to get the beggar before he changed into something else once he knew I knew he was one of the JinYeongs. Figured it was better to get him as quickly and painlessly as possible, or he’d find a way to use those poor kids against us again.”

  His huge hand reached out and enclosed mine, cool and clammy. “Thank you,” he said.

  “That’s what I wanted to say,” I told him.

  “No,” he said, and this time he took both of my hands and looked at me properly. “Thank you for allowing us to save everyone.”

  “Well, what else are nieces for?” I said, grinning at him. “C’mon, we’d better try to get out of here.”

  “What of JinYeong?” he asked, rising. “The mimic might have spoken the truth when it said it works from the original.”

  “If he’s here in the house, we’ll never be able to find him,” I said. “And I don’t think he is here: the mimic wouldn’t have run the risk of impersonating him if he was still here for us to find. Reckon he left a while ago; he was probably looking for us.”

  “Don’t expect him to turn up at the house,” Zero said, and he very carefully didn’t point out that it was most likely that JinYeong was already dead.

  “Nah, he’s probably up to something else,” I said, because I didn’t want to say dead either. I refused to believe it: JinYeong had had a plan last time I saw him at the window, and he wouldn’t have failed so easily at it.

  I threw a last look around the cavernous room and noticed the gleam of silver that was still somehow present in the centre of the platform up above.

  “Oi,” I said. “The knife hasn’t gone anywhere.”

  “It must prefer being a knife to being separated pieces of Between,” Zero said.

  “Looks like it. Reckon I should bring it along? Seems a pity to leave it here.”

  More than that, it seemed a pity to let it stay here to be picked up and used by someone else. It wasn’t that I particularly wanted my own weapon that didn’t have to be drawn out of Between; it was more that I didn’t like creating something that obviously enjoyed existing, then leaving it for someone else to use.

  Maybe I was the jealous sort.

  I was already trotting up the stairs to get it when Zero said, “Bring it. See if it will come with you. Better yet, see if it’s still around tomorrow after you take it back to the house.”

  “I’m more worried about if we’ll be around tomorrow,” I said over my shoulder; but I said it cheerfully, and I felt cheerful. You know, for someone who had just killed another person and had had her hopes shattered again. “You reckon JinYeong is actually in the arena, though, right?”

  “I think JinYeong is very determined,” said Zero. “And I think we didn’t see him at the windows this morning.”

  “You reckon he’s dead or in here,” I translated, picking up the knife and darting back down the stairs and toward the door. “Okay, that’s good. He’s in here, then.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Zero said, starting after me. “Pet! I didn’t say that!”

  “Not to worry,” I told him, grinning over my shoulder. “I did.”

  I kept a grim hold of that thought, too, because if JinYeong wasn’t in here, then he was out in the human world and hadn’t come to the window that morning for an unknown reason. But if he was in here, how had he got in, and why hadn’t we seen him? Worse, where was he now?

  There weren’t exactly turns after turns like the mimic had told us, but the doorways and staircases definitely didn’t lead back to where they should have, and we’d been walking around in irritatingly clean marble halls for quite some time before we had to stop and take stock.

  “Well, we’re on the bottom level again, anyway,” I pointed out. “That’s good, isn’t it?”

  “Only if we can find a doorway out,” said Zero, his voice lingering in the hall as he stepped into the next room. Sarah and I followed him, still not too keen about being out of sight of each other for long.

  “He said he was the key,” I remarked. “Maybe we should have dragged his body around with us.”

  It was a bit late for that now; I doubted we’d be able to find the same level again, let alone the same room we’d left his body in.

  “Wait,” said Zero, stiffening. He looked around the room we were in, and I saw the utter irritation that swept over his face for one second before he strode over to the nearest wall.

  “That’s a wall,” I told him. “Dunno if you’ve got some snow blindness going on or what, but that’s definitely a wall.”

  Zero sniffed a short laugh, and then he just…walked through the wall.

  “Heck,” I said into the silence that he left behind him. “The flamin’ house was mimicked as well.”

  “I would never have thought of that,” Sarah said, her eyes wide.

  “’Course you would,” I said. “But that’s the good thing about going around Behind with friends; there’s always someone else to think of it first so you don’t have to waste time.”

  “There aren’t any friends, Behind,” she said sadly.

  “That’s just what they want you to think,” I told her. “It’s a lie they tell you so it’s easier to manipulate you.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  I didn’t have to ask what she was sorry about: I still remembered her young-yet-old voice agreeing with Zero that it was best to kill the heirlings.

  “Heck,” I said. “If I’d been stuck Behind for a year and had to claw my way out, I probably would have thought the same. I was lucky enough to go Behind with friends whenever I had to go. That’s why I said that you should always go Behind with a few friends, if you can. Then there’s always someone to be strong when the other person isn’t. It’s easier to be strong enough to do the right thing when there’s someone there to support you.”

  “You didn’t have much support back in there,” she said.

  “I dunno,” I said, thinking back to the silence as I had climbed stairs toward four JinYeongs. “There was enough. C’mon; we better go through before he thinks he has to come back after us. He’d never let us live it down.”

  Chapter Ten

  There was a dead kind of silence to Sarah’s house. It wasn’t until we’d been in it for a few minutes that I understood why that was. I’d been so used to seeing Between about anywhere I went that the complete absence of it felt almost like death.

  Once I came to that realisation, another came with it. The soft luminescence that muddled the floor beneath me in what seemed to be set paths wasn’t just a dirty floor: it was the traces of the humans who had lived in the house, painted in what must have been human magic leaking through the very soles of their feet to sink into the carpet and tiles.

  More, I could tell that the tracks were recent: maybe only a day or two old. I knew that because the fresh tracks Sarah was leaving as she stepped through the door were brighter by far, new and strong, while the ones by the door she must have left by yesterday were glowing softer.

  “Did you blokes search the house while you were here?” I asked, following the strongest adult tracks across the room and toward the next room. I thought they might go upstairs, but they didn’t. They led across the lower floor instead, and toward the back of a room that should have been deeper than it was.

  “Of course,” Zero said. “We looked in every room.”

  “They were here,” I said, frowning, still following those tracks. I probably wouldn’t have been able to follow them if it were my house or Ralph’s house, but the complete lack of Between and fae magic around the place made it easier to see the faint traces of human magic. “Looks like your parents have a bit of the touch for magic, too.”

  “They used to joke about it,” said Sarah, her face momentarily softer. “Mum’s knack for turning channels at just the right time—Dad with his plants. The jokes stopped pretty quickly afte
r I started being able to…do stuff.”

  “Makes it easier for me to see where they were around the house,” I explained. Of Zero, I asked, “Can’t you see it?”

  He shook his head, frowning. “Behind doesn’t acknowledge the existence of human magic: we have no way of being able to verify or recognise it. I can see a pattern on the floor, no more.”

  “I can only see the really strong bits,” said Sarah. “I’m better with Between than magic. What are you seeing?”

  “Tracks,” I said. “I can see where your parents walked last. Here.”

  They followed me across the room, and we stopped at the wall beside a nice bit of furniture that was just a bit too big to be a hallstand with a softly weeping fern on each side of it that brushed against the wall.

  “What’s here?” I asked. “It’s not just a wall, is it?”

  “It’s the saferoom,” Sarah said, her voice hushed. “They went in there?”

  “Reckon so.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “They wouldn’t have gone in there without me. They didn’t even call out to me, and they would have if they thought we were in danger!”

  “They could have been lured in,” Zero said.

  “Someone lured them into the saferoom while I was still in the house?” Sarah said, her voice catching. “That doesn’t make sense. They would never have trusted someone in the house who wasn’t…wasn’t…me.”

  “You reckon someone’s been playing silly beggars with your face again?”

  “I suppose so,” she said bitterly. “I’m the only one they would have trusted.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time that parents were beguiled by someone with the appearance of their child,” Zero said, surprising me with the kindness of his intent in saying it. “Can you open it?”

  By way of answering, Sarah took down first one and then the other of the ferns, and the section of wall between the corner and the hallstand sank back an inch and slid silently sideways.

  “Flamin’ heck!” I said, impressed. I’d never seen a saferoom before. I tried to tap the touchpad on the door, but my hand seemed to skitter sideways without quite being able to touch it. When I tried to put a hand on the door itself, the same thing happened.