Phantom Pains

by Mishell Baker

  “I can translate,” said Claybriar.

  “No,” said Belinda. “For something of this magnitude, and dare I say time pressure, we need her direct words. Her thoughts will need to be brought to order.”

  Alvin flinched. “You don’t mean . . .”

  “You have been through enough,” said Dame Belinda. “I shall not require you to open a vein. If anyone has earned that unpleasant duty, it is the young woman who placed us in this position to begin with.”

  “Am I losing my mind here,” I said, “or are we all casually discussing letting the Seelie Queen drink my blood?”

  “You did swear yourself to her service,” Belinda said wryly.

  “Surely there’s somewhere else you can get blood. Hell, there’s a gallon or two of it splattered across the front yard.”

  “Queen Dawnrowan is of the Seelie Court,” said Dame Belinda icily. “The gift must be given consensually.”

  “Christ,” I said. “Fine, I’ve had worse. Let’s get this over with before the cops show up.”

  It might have been the same syringe they used when I signed the contract, or maybe they had piles of them lying around somewhere. Just a few drops in a glass of water, and apparently that was enough to let Dawnrowan borrow the words from Claybriar’s head and arrange them herself. More importantly, it allowed her to settle down and focus.

  Unfortunately, Shiverlash was the one who insisted upon opening negotiations, and she opened them with a demand that all sidhe be removed from their thrones and that no further spirits be enslaved in spellwork against their wills. Naturally that didn’t go over well.

  “That flies against everything in the Accord,” said Dame Belinda. “I know you are not familiar with the treaty, but if we break it, there will be open war not only between the Courts, but between worlds. None of us can afford that.”

  Shiverlash smiled coldly. “None of us?”

  “Let’s not forget,” said Alvin, “that we’re your only chance of ever seeing your world again. So yeah, right now? You’ve got the least resources of anyone here.”

  “May I speak, before this escalates?” said Caryl. She cradled her newly bandaged forearm against herself, as though all the talk of blood had made her protective of hers. “My experience living in both worlds lends me a bit of perspective.”

  “By all means,” said the ninety-year-old to the nineteen-year-old with all the dry irony one might expect. “Please share your wisdom with us.”

  Caryl ignored her tone. “Arcadia’s reality exists by consensus. The scepters work because at the time of the Accord, all fey were weary enough from war that they agreed upon the way that sovereignty would function. It is entirely possible to rewrite the Accord to suit all parties, but we would have to arrive at a similar level of unanimity. That, I suspect, is why the Accord is so seldom rewritten.”

  “Interesting but irrelevant,” said Belinda. “I cannot imagine a compromise that would please all parties in this room, much less in all of Arcadia.”

  “We’re going to have to find one,” I said. “Remember, all that’s keeping our siren friend from trying to end us all is that she thinks she still has a chance of getting what she wants. Peace is not a motivator for her.”

  “She wants the extermination of the sidhe,” said Queen Dawnrowan, her eyes sad and magnificent. “Do you expect us to bend to that?”

  “The why is the key here, don’t you think?” I said. “Maybe it’s not so much a knee-jerk prejudice as your people’s intractable habit of enslaving her friends. And maybe a little bit because her husband cheated with one of you, but I think mostly the slave thing.”

  “Let us test that,” said Winterglass. “If this is truly a matter of principle and not blind hatred, let us bend on the principle without surrendering to malice.”

  Shiverlash turned to him, nostrils flaring as though trying to scent his ruse. “What do you mean?”

  “Instead of removing all sidhe from the throne,” said Winterglass, “what if we rewrite the portion of the Accord that bars other breeds of fey from inheriting? I am already forced into sharing my power with a monster, after all,” he said with a gesture to his charming queen, “so why not install a monster-king in the Seelie Court as well? If we give power to ‘the people’ on both sides, will that not, eventually, lead to fairer treatment of the spirits?”

  “It may,” said Shiverlash, looking at the clearly appalled Dawnrowan with a cruel smile. “It may indeed.”

  “What it would do,” said Queen Dawnrowan coolly, her eyes steady on Winterglass, “is saddle me with an unwanted equal, cripple my rule in the way that yours is already crippled. That is your real interest in making this ‘compromise.’ You will not suffer your rival to enjoy a secure rule that is lost to you.”

  “You have no way of knowing my thoughts, Seelie, unless I offer them to you. And I have no intention of doing so.”

  “There is no use in arguing anyhow,” said Dawnrowan airily. “Even if I agreed, the Seelie people would never come to a consensus on who ought to be king, particularly if you take every eligible sidhe duke out of the running.”

  “Is it not obvious?” said Winterglass. “Your commoners’ most beloved hero is already standing directly behind you.”

  There was a horrible silence. Then everyone seemed to start shouting except me, and notably, Claybriar. I looked at him for the first time since the meeting started, only to find him watching me with a look of fatalistic despair.

  “Silence, please,” said Dame Belinda. “This is nothing more than a cruel joke.”

  “It is no such thing!” protested Winterglass, looking mortally offended enough that Dame Belinda fell silent.

  “In order for this decision to have any hope of being binding,” Caryl said, “we would need consent from Queen Dawnrowan, and of course, from Claybriar himself.”

  Dawnrowan turned around for a moment to gaze up at Claybriar behind her. Then she turned back to face her opposition. “If I must share my rule to ensure that the Unseelie Court leave us in peace,” she said, “then I would be honored to share it with one who has served me so faithfully.” The flush on her cheeks spoke volumes, however, about her real reasons, and I felt my hands curl into fists.

  Another round of silence.

  “Yes,” murmured Shiverlash to herself after a moment, smug as a cat. “I adore this idea. Let us see how the pet behaves when off his leash.”

  Alvin looked poleaxed. “Uh . . . did we just get all three monarchs to agree?”

  “For markedly different reasons,” Dame Belinda pointed out warningly.

  “Still,” said Alvin. “What was that, thirty seconds?”

  “We have heard only from three of four monarchs,” said Winterglass.

  Everyone turned to look at Claybriar.

  “Please don’t,” he said. “Don’t make me a pawn in this.”

  Wrong chess piece, bro, I wanted to say, but couldn’t. My throat felt clogged.

  “You demean yourself,” Caryl said gently. “You are an intelligent man, and a courageous one. The commoners all but worship you.”

  “I can’t,” he said.

  “Please think carefully before you refuse,” said Caryl. “While a strong enough consensus could conceivably overrule even your objection, your agreement weighs heavily. You could make this a reality, Claybriar. Here and now, you could effectively usher in the Third Accord.”

  Claybriar turned again to look at me.

  “What?” I said, and immediately figured out why speaking was a bad idea. When the word came loose, it unplugged whatever had been keeping my tears at bay.

  “I won’t do this if you don’t want me to,” he said.

  “So you’ll, what, let Arcadia fall apart?” Tears streamed down my face; I couldn’t stop them and felt like an idiot. “You’ll throw your entire world and probably mine under the bus because you don’t want to make me cry?”

  “Yes,” he said softly.

  “What kind of a king thinks that way?”
I snapped.

  “My point exactly.”

  “Do it,” I said. “Go be the Beast King of Arcadia. It’s not like you’re much use as my Echo.”

  “Millie,” said Caryl.

  “No, stop it!” I said. “Stop acting like I have a choice. We’ve stumbled on the one thing in the world that everyone important can agree on, and I’d have to be the fucking Beast Queen myself to stop it from happening. So do it, Clay. Marry your queen. Let these ignorant, elitist assholes try and use you. Just don’t tell me not to fucking cry about it.”

  “Millie.” Claybriar this time, gentle.

  “Fuck you!” I snapped at him. “Anyone who’s not blind or crazy can see why this needs to happen. But most of me is blind and crazy right now—so I can’t be at this meeting.”

  I headed for the stairs. As I passed by Claybriar, he reached for my arm, but I shrugged him off almost violently. No one else tried to stop me from leaving, because the truth was, with the scale of everything that was happening right now, I really didn’t matter at all.

  41

  I don’t know how long I lay on my air mattress, too weary even to take off my prosthetics. I must have dozed off at some point, because when I heard a gentle knock on my door and opened my sore, gritty eyes, it was dark outside the windows.

  I didn’t get up.

  After a few more knocks, I heard the jangling of keys, and then the door opened. Caryl came in and sat by the mattress, on the side I was facing. Elliott was with her, or my assisted hallucination of him, I guess; he landed on the floor right in my eye line and folded his wings neatly, blinking at me.

  “Are you all right?” Caryl said.

  “Peachy,” I said, not even looking at her. “Where is everybody?”

  She probably knew who I meant by “everybody” but chose to answer the question generally. “Arcadia, mostly,” she said. “There is much to be done to rally the population to a consensus.”

  “So he’s going to do it.”

  “He agrees that peace is the most important thing right now.”

  “How long will that last? I mean, once Shiverlash sits her butt back on the throne, it all comes apart. The only penalty for breaking the Accord is war, right? And for her that’s not exactly a deterrent.”

  “Then we must work on building the power of the Seelie Court and the Arcadia Project so that war with us both is a deterrent. We must also do our best to establish more cordial relations with her. And we must not be slow about it.”

  “I picked a really bad time to sign that employment contract.”

  Caryl laid a hand on my arm, just above the elbow. I barely had the time to process that she wasn’t wearing gloves before she withdrew the gesture.

  “What happens now?” I said.

  “If possible,” said Caryl, “I would like for you to attend my sentencing in the morning.”

  “They can’t still think you’re guilty!”

  “Shiverlash can ransack the spirits’ minds as easily as they could ransack ours. She has removed all doubt as to the identity of Tamika’s murderer. For now she proves herself quite useful.”

  “Then why a sentence?”

  “My fate has always been undecided,” said Caryl. “Recent events have brought that question to the fore.”

  “I can’t lose both of you to this mess,” I said. “I can’t.”

  “You may,” she said. “You must stop telling yourself what will be the end of you. You do not know what you can survive until it is done.”

  “Would you fight harder if I said we could be together?”

  “No,” said Caryl. “You were right about that. Sometimes I am not even certain that we should be friends. We are both far too vulnerable, and we are both too good at manipulating others. In my case, arcanely, if necessary. And without Elliott, I can no longer trust my—what does Dr. Davis call it? My rational mind?—to pilot the majority of my decisions.”

  “For what it’s worth, I believe in you,” I said.

  “So do I,” spoke up Elliott, giving me a hell of a turn. I’d sort of forgotten that he could do that. “And I will always help you, Caryl, if you need it. Just—ask first.”

  Caryl gave him a faint smile. Her practiced smile, the one moved by the strings of her face and not by her feelings. But then the smile flickered. “Do you hear that?” she said.

  “Hear what?” I listened and heard it too: the faint sound of footsteps descending the spiral staircase that led down from the room directly above me.

  “Phil?” I wondered aloud.

  “It isn’t time for a shift change,” Caryl said. “And the only people who can travel without prior approval . . .” She trailed off, and we both looked toward the open door.

  When Claybriar’s silhouette appeared, tall and slouching uncertainly in the hallway, Caryl rose without a word and gestured for him to enter, leaving the two of us alone.

  “I can’t stay long,” he said, hesitating just inside the doorway. “But I didn’t want to leave for the High Court without—”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “You don’t have to—”

  “I do.”

  I sat awkwardly on my air mattress, hugging myself. “Can I ask . . . do you love her?”

  He didn’t need to ask who I meant. “Not the way I love you,” he said.

  “Well, that’s nice and vague.”

  “What is it you need to hear from me?”

  “Just . . . I don’t know. Do you love her more than me? I mean, I’d understand. You’ve known her so long, and she’s—”

  “Millie. Do you know why I finally decided to go ahead and be king?”

  “So you can boss her around?”

  “No. So I don’t have to keep living every second of my life afraid that she’ll find out how much you mean to me, that she’ll go into a jealous rage and order me never to see you again.”

  “Oh, Clay.” I was glad I hadn’t taken off my legs, because I had to stand up, to go to him, to put my arms around him and hear his heartbeat, even though I knew it hurt. I kept it brief, to be merciful.

  “I won’t tell you she means nothing to me,” he said when I’d withdrawn, “but you’re my Echo, my first and my last thought in everything, always.”

  I looked up at him, bewildered and teary. “I’ve never been anybody’s first anything,” I said. “I was second place to my mom, for God’s sake, and she was dead. So . . . it’s going to take me a while to believe you.”

  “Well, hopefully,” he said, “we’ll all live through this mess long enough for you to take it for granted, maybe cheat on me a few times.”

  My face burned. “Clay . . .”

  “I’m messing with you,” he said. “I’m probably not going to be around enough to justify planting a flag on you, even if you didn’t have iron bones. When you do decide to whore it up, though, as your king I’m going to demand details.”

  “You’re an asshole,” I said.

  “You’re an asshole, Your Majesty,” he corrected me, then caught my wrists with his bare hands before I could pummel him. He held them to his heart, pulse against pulse, and kissed me good-bye.

  • • •

  The next morning I got to the studio a little early, so I could check on Naderi and make sure she wasn’t planning to run off and join David Berenbaum at Dead Echo Ranch.

  When Javier cleared me to go into her office, I was surprised to find Inaya there. Naderi looked like shit; the whole right side of her face was all bandaged up from where she’d been mauled by the siren the day before. With baffling cheerfulness, she informed me that she’d had fifty-eight stitches.

  “This can only add to my legend,” she said.

  “Have they not . . . do you not know about Brand?” I said.

  She waved it away. “They tell me he’s dead, but that can’t be right. I’m still writing like a madwoman.”

  I opened my mouth to explain to her that it took a while for the Echo effect to wear off, but I stopped. There was no point in forcing t
he truth on her here and now while she was badly injured and still trying to work. Eventually she’d come down from the high, figure it out for herself. And when she did, I’d be there. I owed her that much.

  “Right now,” Naderi went on, “I’m just trying to get as much of the show planned out as I can.”

  “Then what?”

  She looked at Inaya and reached out a hand, palm up. Inaya reached back, gave the hand a strong clasp, and smiled at her old friend.

  “Then Inaya won’t be trying to run this place on her own anymore.”

  “You’re going to be a partner in the studio?”

  “She is,” said Inaya. “This gets you off the hook for finding me a new assistant, by the way. I won’t be alone here with all these big secrets anymore, so I can replace you with anyone I want.”

  “What about Maneaters?”

  “I’ll still be executive producer,” said Naderi, “and I’ll still approve all the scripts, but T. J. is going to help me put together a writing team.”

  “Tjuan?” I couldn’t help but break out in a huge grin. “You put him on your writing staff?”

  “I made him supervising producer.”

  “So . . . does that mean he’s no longer an agent of the Arcadia Project?”

  “Well, that’s the thing,” said Inaya. “We’re waiting to find out who’s going to be in charge here in L.A. We have some ideas about Valiant’s relationship with the Project going forward, so whoever it is, we’ll need to talk. We’ve already got the makings of a Gate here—put in some basic housing and we’ve got ourselves a whole new kind of Residence.”

  “This sounds cool as hell,” I said, “and I’ve got a ton of ideas that have been rattling around in my head ever since Vivian told me David’s dumb idea last summer. Right now, though, I’ve got to go make sure my best friend doesn’t get sent to the guillotine.”

  “Go save Caryl,” said Inaya. “We’re not going anywhere.”

  The meeting took place in stage 13, of course; it was beginning to feel like the Arcadia Project’s home away from home. It was a more intimate affair than I had expected: the only people assembled at the long table were Dame Belinda, Tjuan, Alvin, Caryl, and a swarthy man I didn’t recognize. His wrists, disturbingly, were bound in heavy iron shackles.