Copper Ravens

by Jennifer Allis Provost

  I stared at my big brother, shocked and amazed for reasons he would not like to hear about. Yeah, I suppose that Dad would eventually hear about these antics, and if the creatures Max was hanging around with didn’t kill him, Dad sure would once he found out. This was the stupidest, most irresponsible plan I’d ever heard, and I’d grown up with Max’s stupid plans.

  And yet, that didn’t stop the guilt that stabbed at my heart. Here I’d been, mooning over having to get dressed up and attend court functions and worrying about the possibility of babies, and forgetting what we were all supposed to be doing—looking for Dad.

  I’d just turned seven when my father got the call to war; I was eight and a half when the war, and the reports on him, abruptly ceased. To this day, we had no idea what had happened to him, not even if he was alive or dead. The Iron Queen had led me to believe that Dad was still alive; she’d insinuated that she’d known him, and said that she couldn’t imagine death taking him. Still, I didn’t think it was wise to put my faith in a known liar.

  After Micah and I had freed Max from the Institute, he’d revealed that Dad had remained in contact with him for a few years after the wars ended, though the rest of the family had been unaware of this. To Mom, Sadie and me, Dad was just gone; I don’t know what hurt more, the fact that Dad hadn’t come by, or Max’s revelation that, two years after the wars ended, all contact abruptly stopped. I could only think of two things that would have kept Dad from us for that long, and if he’d been imprisoned, he’d have probably escaped by now. The other option, I just refused to consider.

  But Max seemed to think our father was alive, and, being that he’d apparently once been headquartered in the Goblin Market, near enough to the Whispering Dell to hear about these drunken escapades. Mind you, getting in fights in the village square was not the proper way to locate a missing man. One should organize a search, complete with maps and compasses and things. However, I didn’t have any of those things, or the resources to put together a search party, or any desire to hear Sadie talk about the fricken’ Dewey Decimal System ever again.

  “So,” Max said, “want to come with me?”

  “When do we leave?” Really, what could go wrong?

  Call me naïve, but I’d always assumed that the seedy underbelly, whether in the Otherworld or the Mundane realm, was only out at night. I mean, how could such ne’er-do-wells prosper in the full light of day? While the sun watched from above, respectable shopkeepers and artisans went about their business, making quality products and earning a fair wage for their honest work. Once the mats were rolled up and the stalls were shuttered, and the sun’s watchful eye was asleep, the bad guys emerged to cheat and pilfer what was left.

  Yeah, naïve.

  On this day the sun was blazing hot, though it was long before noon, and there I was with my brother in what we from the Mundane world would call a dive bar, complete with battered chairs and a sticky floor. All that was needed to complete the trashy ensemble were a jukebox and a mechanical bull. Oh, and some off-key karaoke wouldn’t hurt.

  As I pried my shoe off the floor, I was hit with a pang of homesickness for The Room, the dive where I used to hang out with my coworkers at Real Estate Evaluation Services, though they weren’t actually my coworkers. It was a sham job, set up by Peacekeepers to spy on my family. You would think that the government would find other ways to spend our tax dollars.

  Anyway, The Room’s floor had never been washed, at least not in the year and a half I’d frequented it, and for a long time before that. But, the beer had been cheap and cold, the pretzels salty and crisp, and the music wasn’t completely horrible, so I kept going back. I wondered if this place, aptly named The Dell’s Alehouse, had any good beers on tap.

  Oddly, at least to me, a stream ran through the center of the common room. Was this their version of running water? No, I’d seen a well outside the building, so this was…decorative? For fishing? I sighed and took a seat at the bar next to Max; for all I knew, the stream kept evil from crossing sides.

  Hey, that just might be it.

  “You come here a lot?” I asked. Max signaled the bartender, and two brightly colored concoctions that reminded me of unset gelatin were delivered a moment later. So much for beer.

  “I’ve been a time or two.” He drank from his glass, the contents leaving a ring of orange slime around his mouth. Nice.

  “Too bad we didn’t invite Sadie,” I murmured, now tilting my glass from side to side. It seemed that, the more the liquid moved, the more it solidified.

  Weird.

  “Like she would have come,” Max said, annoyed, and I could hardly blame him. Sadie hadn’t left the manor since the Iron Queen’s death; in fact, she hardly even left the main house to walk the grounds, lovely as they were. I get antsy if I’m holed up at the manor for a day or so, even with my morning walks around the orchards, but Sadie seemed content to haunt the silver halls until the end of time.

  “What’s she hiding from?” I wondered, not expecting an answer. Max, true to form, did the unexpected.

  “This,” he replied, gesturing to encompass the bar. “All of this.” I squinted into the dark corners and saw a few orcs embroiled in a drinking game, some horse-faced beings arguing over their bill, and a pixie, roughly half the size of a human, slowly gyrating for a table full of human men. It was an odd sort of chaos, kept to a dull roar by the constant threat of the bartender, who was the largest, ugliest man I’d ever seen. And, since his head was covered in bulging eyes, he saw everything all the time.

  Which came in pretty handy when Max signaled for a refill. “She’s terrified,” I murmured. Max nodded as he sipped his second drink, intent on watching the pixie. “She’s got to realize that it’s not all bad here.”

  “How are we gonna make her realize that when we can’t even get her out the door?” Max asked. The pixie had slipped her gown off her shoulder, leaving the men at the table, and my brother, fully enthralled. By all that is holy, please don’t let Max start drooling.

  “There’s something else we need to talk about,” Max murmured. “Mike Armstrong. He’s making a bid for the Presidency.”

  “Mike Armstrong?” The name was familiar, but I couldn’t recall a politician named Armstrong. The only person I had ever known with the surname Armstrong was…

  Oh, crap. Juliana.

  I had met Juliana in middle school, a few years after Max had been arrested by the Peacekeepers. She and I had become fast friends; for much of my life, she had been the only friend I had. School and the teen years are tough enough, but having an M.I.A. father and brother and a surname synonymous with Elemental power, not to mention living in a mansion when most others resided in government shacks, doesn’t exactly ingratiate oneself to one’s peers. Without Juliana, I don’t know what would have become of me.

  Fast forward a few years: I’m an adult, living in my own government-issued apartment, and working with Juliana at Real Estate Evaluation Services. I meet Micah and learn that I’m a Dreamwalker and that my father and brother are (probably) still alive. Despite being a supposedly responsible adult and somewhat intelligent, I decide to dreamwalk to Max. Alone. Without even Micah’s help.

  Yeah. I know.

  Anyway, I’d found Max, trussed up like a science experiment gone wrong, in the Institute for Elemental Research. In the control room, with all the other lab coats, was Juliana.

  She was a Peacekeeper. My lifelong best friend not only turned out to be a Peacekeeper, but she had known where my missing brother was all along. Frickin’ bitch. I hope she got fired after we rescued Max.

  “Who’s Mike Armstrong?” I asked, hoping against hope that he was someone I’d never heard of.

  “Juliana’s uncle,” Max replied. “The head of the Institute for Elemental Research.”

  “The who of the what?” Feigning ignorance, I took a long pull on my drink, both surprised and disappointed to learn that it was the Otherworld’s version of Kool-Aid. Based on the direction this conversat
ion was heading, I wanted something eye-wateringly alcoholic.

  Almost ten years ago, Peacekeepers had stormed into the Raven Compound and arrested Max for his so-called crimes against humanity. That was political speak for the fact that he wouldn’t stop practicing magic, which was his birthright as a metal Elemental. There was a sham trial that we, his family, weren’t even invited to, and then Max was hauled off to prison. At least, that’s what we were told.

  What had really happened was that Max had made a deal with the Peacekeepers. They were methodically eliminating the Inheritors, those gifted souls who came along once a generation that had a more intense affinity with their Element, or so it seemed. In reality, the Peacekeepers were capturing and attempting to study them, but the Inheritors were decidedly against being lab rats. Ultimately, they all perished, all save one—the Inheritor of Metal.

  After the last Metal Inheritor, Olquin, died, no one knew the identity of his replacement; no one, save my parents and Max, knew that Sadie, the youngest Corbeau, was the new Inheritor. That fact was one of the main reasons Dad had so readily gone off to fight in the Magic Wars; for all we knew, he was still fighting today. Before Dad left, Max had promised our father that he would protect the family by any means necessary, so once Dad disappeared, and Olquin was dead, Max felt like he was out of options. He’d contacted the Peacekeepers, represented himself as the Metal Inheritor, and went willingly to the Institute.

  According to Max, all had gone as well as could be expected for the first few years, until he’d found a bit of metal out in the exercise yard, shaped it into a lily, and had given it to a girl as a love token. Things went downhill from there, and by the time Micah and I had rescued him, Max was nothing more than skin and bones, held in a plastic coffin with wires and tubes stuck all over him, his days spent in a drug-induced stupor.

  And now he tells me that Juliana’s uncle was the man responsible for all of it.

  “You didn’t know?” he asked.

  “Of course not,” I snapped. “Juliana lied to me about everything.”

  “She didn’t have much of a choice,” Max said, surprisingly without rancor. “Sometimes, I think she was way worse off than I was.”

  “Yeah. I’m sure her cushy job as a Peacekeeper kept her up late at night.” Max gave me a sidelong glance but dropped the subject of my former friend.

  “Anyway, her uncle runs the Institute,” he reiterated. “And now, he wants to run the world. His platform is that his research on Elementals gives him an edge to keep the Mundanes safe.”

  “You mean his research on you,” I grumbled.

  “There were others,” Max said, tracing the edge of his glass.

  “There were?” I recalled my own brief forays into the Institute. There had been lots and lots of Mundanes, guards and lab coats and such, but the only Elemental I ever saw was Max. Then again, I’d only been concerned with finding my brother. “Are they still there? Should we help them?”

  Max shook his head. “I outlived them. All of them.”

  “Oh.” I shuddered, the specter of dead Elementals I’d never even known chilling me. Desperate for a subject change, I continued, “So what if this Mike Armstrong wants to be president? What’s the difference—” Recognition hit me like a ton of bricks, so hard I almost fell off my stool. “Wait. Uncle Mike?”

  Max’s eyes slid back to mine. “You do know him.”

  Uncle Mike was a fat, jolly man, a lot like Santa without the beard. Or much other hair, for that matter. He was the patriarch of the Armstrong clan, being that his brother, Juliana’s dad, had died while she and her little brother, Corey, were very young. He was the man who had looked out for Juliana and Corey and their mom, making sure that Corey got to attend music school and that Juliana and her mother were always well cared for. I remembered the Armstrong summer get-togethers, with Uncle Mike manning the grill, burning hot dogs, and slipping us beers when we were way underage.

  I also remembered Juliana’s warnings to not drink those beers and to never let myself be alone with her uncle. At the time, I’d thought he was just a dirty old man. Now, I wonder if his plan was to bag me and start a whole different batch of experiments.

  I grabbed my drink and swirled it. “Yeah. I remember him.”

  Max nodded. “He’s the bad guy, Sara. He’s high up in the Peacekeeper ranks. If he becomes President, there’s no telling what he’ll do.”

  “I still don’t see what difference it makes. Life already sucks for human Elementals.”

  “Yeah, but at least they’re kinda free,” Max said, once again distracted by the dancing pixie. “Don’t practice, don’t show your mark, and you can live a normal life. You know that; hell, Sadie wishes she could go back to that. Trust me, if anyone can make things worse, it’s him. He was the one in with Ferra.”

  Max let the implication hang in the air. Evil Peacekeepers united with evil Elementals would make life worse for everyone, but would that really happen? I mean, surely Elementals would rise up against that. Surely we of the Otherworld would band together and—

  And I remembered that we had done just that, during the Magic Wars. We’d lost an entire dimension to those righteous lunatics. Maybe Max was right, and we should do something about Uncle Mike. I mean, if I had to choose a new president of Pacifica, my first choice would not be the mad scientist who’d been in with the evil queen.

  “You know all this, but how?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “People talk to me.”

  I tugged on Max’s sleeve, wanting to discuss this Uncle Mike situation a bit further, but the pixie’s gown was now off both shoulders, held to her breasts by a delicate hand. I sighed and left Max to his fantasies while I looked around at the patrons. People-watching had always been one of my favorite pastimes, and the Otherworld certainly didn’t disappoint. And, the bartender notwithstanding, residents of the Otherworld tended to be uncannily beautiful.

  I was watching a seal maiden, what Mom would call a selkie, unceremoniously shed her clothes, ignoring the chorus of catcalls as she slipped on her seal skin, when I spied one of the reasons for Sadie’s fears. As the selkie flopped into the stream and swam away (so that’s what it was for!), I saw that the table behind the seal maiden was occupied by an iron warrior.

  “Max!” I whispered. When he didn’t respond, I followed his gaze; the pixie’s gown was down around her waist and, based on the pile of offerings before her, it would be going lower.

  “Max!” I grabbed his arm. “One of Ferra’s warriors is in the corner!”

  “So?”

  “So!” I squeaked. “So what if he’s mad? What if—”

  “All right,” Max said. “Act cool, and we’ll leave.” Max dropped a few coins on the bar alongside our empty glasses, spared a longing look at the pixie, and we casually moved toward the exit. And yes, the metal man followed us.

  “Max—”

  “Just follow me.” We walked down the middle of the wide avenue, past alleyways and shops as we headed toward the central open air market. “We’ll lose him in the stalls.”

  I nodded, desperately trying not to look over my shoulder. You know, like how you specifically didn’t peek out from under the covers to see if the monster was in your room? Unless it was the sort of monster that always disappeared when you looked. Then, you had to stick your head out, at least once.

  After a panicked yet slow stroll about the market, I stopped at a booth that sold cloaks made from raptor feathers. I don’t know what aspect amazed me more—that some fool had actually gone out and gathered all these feathers or that people wanted to dress up like overgrown parakeets. As I examined a gaudy pink creation, I hazarded a look down the street. “Hey,” I called to Max. “I think it worked.”

  Max smirked the “I’m the oldest, of course it worked” smirk. Before I could comment, the iron warrior—the very same iron warrior that Max had assured me wasn’t a threat—launched himself out from behind the stalls and tackled Max.

  Now Max is no slouch
with his abilities, but he was taken completely by surprise. They rolled around on the dusty ground, and in a heartbeat’s time the iron warrior had Max pinned. That left me, still new to my Elemental nature, to save my brother.

  The warrior had his full weight on Max’s chest, crushing his lungs. I squinted, concentrating on pulling the warrior off Max. He moved enough for Max to breathe, but only just. I spied a metal door across the square, and I increased the affinity between the door and warrior, hoping the larger door would help me drag him away. I was shocked when it actually worked, and the warrior inched off Max’s body.

  Not only did it work, it also made the warrior mad. No longer content to kill Max slowly, he raised an iron fist and aimed right at Max’s chest. Max threw up his hand, and the warrior’s own hand began melting, dripping away before his eyes; if Max hadn’t had the weight of the warrior on his lungs, he would have been screaming in pain. As it was, he could hardly draw breath. Then the warrior bellowed, a rusty, grating sound, and moved enough for Max to roll out from under him. Wheezing and wincing in pain, Max finally found the breath to speak.

  “Sara!” he rasped. “His head!”

  “What about his head?” I didn’t get an answer, since the warrior had gotten to his knees and was raising his other, non-melty arm to strike. I screamed, Max bellowed, and assorted patrons and shopkeepers ran for cover. Then, the warrior clunked over sideways, as lifeless as a car without its engine. Behind him was the dancing pixie from the bar.

  “You are safe now,” she said. “I’ve taken the spark that allows him to be.” She opened her hand, and nestled upon her palm was a small, glowing orb.

  “Thank you,” I said; Max was too battered and burnt to do more than nod. “But, why risk yourself for us?”

  “Do you not remember? Not so long ago, you saved me.” I took in her appearance, her long, silky hair and glimmering wings, and noted the two gaping holes in her wings.