“Sorry, I don’t understand.”
The buffalo rumbled laughter and clasped Ev by the upper arms, exuding goodwill, before lumbering into the crowd.
There was no sign of Teoquan.
Don’t pick the scab. Go back to the dig. Instead of taking his own advice, Ev trudged up to Patience’s suite.
Teoquan was there, all right. “The more of us Astrid melts free, the sooner the People see things my way,” he was saying. “A few old folks won’t change that.”
“I’m an old folk, Teo, “ Patience replied. “And just because you can bust into the real doesn’t mean you should.”
“I should stay here, behave, do everything Eliza says?”
“You’re all attitude and no plan.”
“Oh, I got plans.”
“Don’t start that again. The real’s dangerous, Teo.”
“You could be a goddess, Patience. Real worship, instead of hollow celebrity. Ain’t you tempted?”
He could make her a goddess? Ev swallowed.
“What would that accomplish?”
“Anything you want! I’ll give you power over life and death. The two of us and a committed war party—”
“Are you bulletproof, Teo? Are you so sure you’re unstoppable?”
“Eliza and Astrid can’t keep us here forever.”
“Astrid’s speeding things up; what more do you want?”
“She has a live Burning Man. I want him.”
Patience sighed. “I’ll tell her.”
There was a sound that might have been a kiss. “Think about my offer, and give Ev my regards.” Then Teoquan brushed past him, vanishing into the honeycomb.
Ev gave it a minute, then slipped into the room.
“Don’t say anything,” Patience said. She was coal black, of medium height, and heartstoppingly beautiful.
He swallowed protests: warnings about Teoquan being dangerous, reminders that Astrid was doing her best.
Instead, he put a hand on her shoulder.
“Dammit, Ev, I am nothing but bones. I’m a restaurant dishwasher, not some emissary to gods and psychopaths.”
“You were a beauty queen,” he said. “A celebrity.”
She turned into his arms, and his heart pounded. “I look good, but I’m damn well sixty-eight today.”
“You’re more than bones.”
“He’s going to break into the real, isn’t he?”
“Teo will be okay,” he said, trying to be generous. “If anyone can take care of himself—”
“Hang Teo, Ev.”
He squeezed her, cursing the arousal that came with this proximity … yet enjoying it too, the desire, the feeling of physical rightness, of being who he was meant to be. “The magical spill was always going to be a terrible mess.”
“Mmph.” That cranky grunt. God help him, it was sexy.
“You know, you’ve been working seven days a week.”
“You’re one to talk.”
“You say it’s your birthday?”
“You gonna bake me a cake?”
Something penetrated. “Did you say … hang Teo?”
“Ev Lethewood, you may be the dumbest man I ever met.”
He kissed her. It was a stupid thing to do, he knew it. But before he could draw breath to apologize, her hands were on his face; she was responding, passionately.
Ev felt the tightness in his chest break. He swept her up, off the floor, and carried her to bed.
“Happy birthday to … Lord, you’re heavy.”
“Save your breath, old man.” Giggling, she yanked him down after her. “You’ll need it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
JUST AFTER SHE ESCAPED government custody, Astrid had camped in a salvaged pup tent in a clearing she, Mark, Patience, and Ev had carved out between the vitagua well and the Grand Hotel. The rubble of downtown provided objects to chant, and she’d used them to mulch the overgrown forest around the hotel. The others immediately insisted she take a room inside the building, for safety. Now they’d gone even further, moving Astrid’s real body, the one Katarina called Astrid Prime, into a so-called bomb shelter, a hole Ilya’s tunneling crew had dug below the hospital.
She hated being underground; it reminded her of jail. A volunteer with a healing chantment was always hovering, just like a guard. It was a reasonable precaution, she knew, given the sea-glass caught inside her. Still, having a babysitter chafed.
At least she could concentrate on the mouse magic while her real body was lying around on magical life support.
She’d started with that first flawed copy of herself, the one Will had met. That doppelganger wouldn’t have fooled anyone at a distance, but with practice, she’d been able to make the copies—ringers, Mark had dubbed them—identical to her.
Now there were only a few ways to distinguish between a ringer and the real Astrid. They were icy to the touch, for one thing. For another, the muscles of the small animals at the core of a ringer were weak. They struggled to lift anything heavier than a pencil, and they couldn’t make chantments.
Once she had that first perfect copy, Astrid tried making a second.
She hadn’t expected to be able to control two. To be in more than one place at once, to look out at the world through multiple sets of eyes and hold multiple conversations.… She should have been hopelessly confused.
But the ringers were surprisingly autonomous. They weren’t puppets exactly: they were Astrid, or she was them. They went about her business while Astrid Prime lay in the bomb shelter. Astrid remembered everything they did, every conversation, every decision, as if she’d done it herself.
It was a little like being in a noisy bar, of standing on the edge of a number of overlapping groups, each engaged in intense discussion. The ringers joined in; Astrid Prime heard it all.
She had tragedies to prevent, lives to save. When controlling two of the ringers got easy, she worked her way up to six.
She was working on a seventh when Olive appeared in the cave, with a sack in her hand and a forbidding look on her face.
“Know the only thing worse than having you running around barking at people?”
“I’m not running anywhere. I’m cooped up here.”
“Copies of you everywhere barking at people.”
“I don’t bark. I’m not a barker.”
“Can’t you task one of these ringers with relaxing? Take it to Disneyland or something.”
“If I wanted to bark, I might have reason, but—”
“Don’t be defensive,” Olive said. “Nobody’s making you stay down here.”
“Guilt,” Astrid sighed. “Works better than Roche’s handcuffs.”
“Is guilt why you’re living like a monk? Look around! All you need is bread and water, maybe a flail.…”
It was true: aside from vitagua lanterns, letrico, and a hospital bed, the cavernous chamber was empty. Maybe it was what she deserved, Astrid thought, remembering Sahara, the pile of burned bodies in the courtroom. Caro Forest. “What are you suggesting, Olive?”
“Ilya dug you a big damn hole here.”
“It’s still a hole.”
“You can make anything you want of it. Make a mansion.”
“I should live it up while everyone else is camping?”
“Make a mansion with guest rooms.” Olive gave her a shake.
“Now? Katarina’s trying to teach me quantum physics, and I’m going over priorities with Pike.”
“The point of the ringers is that they can just keep on doing that, right?” Olive said, “I’m telling you, Astrid, make this place habitable.”
Astrid slid off the bed, stifling a moan. That was another thing about the ringers: They felt chilly, cold as if they’d been caught in a hard winter rain, but at least they didn’t hurt.
She pulled letrico through the healing bangle, tamping down the pain.
Olive upended the sack over the bed. Construction chantments tumbled out. “This magic thing can be fun. Remember fun,
Astrid?”
“Fun for me is being outside.”
“Then this is an opportunity for personal growth.”
“No, it’s a waste of power.”
“Your being a grouch is bad for morale.”
A flicker of shame. “I didn’t mean to be grouchy.”
Olive put an arm around her, an embrace that felt both motherly and unfamiliar. Astrid caught a glimpse of an imaginary life that might have been, if she’d married Jacks after all, if Olive had been her mom-in-law. Her father alive, Ev female, a grandmother.
She wished she’d let herself be happy with Jacks, instead of mooning over Sahara.
Sahara had held that old lawyer in front of her. She’d have let Gilead burn everyone, just to save herself.
And it wasn’t vitagua madness; it was who she was, deep down. All these years, Astrid had been in love with a Sahara who’d never existed.
It was too late to tell Will now that he was right, to apologize or say she got it. When Gilead burned Will’s wife, he’d burned all her hopes. The grumbles had to be playing with her. How could Will love her now, after all that had happened?
So Astrid grabbed on to the illusion of might-have-been, just for a second: an ordinary existence, a life with Jacks. No magically flooded towns, no memories of murder, no air force raids trying to kill everyone she knew.
“Olive, I’ll be nicer,” she said. “But Teoquan is after me to locate Lilla Skye, and nobody knows how to help that injured Fyreman. And the curse on magic, we still have to break that.”
“You’re working on that six times over, boss.”
“Boss, right.” Like a queen bee in a hive, Astrid thought, seemingly in charge, almost a slave. She picked up a silver spoon that shaped stone like modeling clay. “You really want me to turn this hole into a prettier hole?”
“It’s important,” Olive said.
“I keep ending up underground.” Roche had kept her in a fake apartment, drywall and plastic plants, a façade of normalcy. She shuddered. Re-creating that …
“Fun,” Olive reminded her.
“I’m trying.” Fun. Speeding on the highway with the radio on, horseback rides, cycling, gardening, boating on Great Blue Reservoir …
Jacks had taken her caving once.
Drawing letrico, she started with the ceiling. She remembered a bowl-shaped cavern with a jagged seam of quartz crystals on its roof; now she copied it, dragging the crystals in a rocky bristle that meandered across the chamber.
“Oh—” Olive paled, covering her mouth.
“He took you there too?”
“Pictures. Of the two of you, I—” She fisted a tear away.
“I didn’t think—”
“Don’t get mushy, Astrid, and don’t stop.”
Embarrassed, she turned to her rudimentary bathroom, molding the stone floor into a trio of deep pools, one steaming, one with icy water, the two nested around each other like a yin–yang symbol and overflowing to mingle in the third basin.
She built up a privacy screen of tumbled pebbles around the hospital bed, then turned to the far wall, digging out sconces for the vitagua lanterns randomly scattered on the floor. The process made a fair pile of rubble. She mashed it all into a massive table.
“You’re not building a boardroom,” Olive warned.
“People keep saying we don’t have anywhere proper to talk.”
“Put in a garden, young woman.”
“Yes, ma’am.” She molded the stone floor, creating columns and walls, building up raised containers, paths, alcoves, stone benches, and a grotto.
Even as she played around with the cave, one of her ringers was in the hotel lobby, working with Pike. Now she asked: “Olive’s got me redecorating the cave. Can you send someone down with uncontaminated topsoil and seeds?”
“Aye, done. Need sunshine?”
“I’ll make something. Someone scavenged up a cheesy suit of armor; maybe that? And some chairs…”
“Armor, furniture,” Pike echoed.
Armor. The idea quirked her sense of humor—
“You’re smiling,” Olive said. “Does it hurt?”
“Yes, okay, you were right. Why don’t you Versailles this place up?” She passed her an ornamental gavel made of brass. The volunteers called it the Midas. It turned rags to silk, pennies to gold, costume jewelry to real gems. They used it to make things they could pawn, when they needed money.
“Really? You want gilt?”
“If I’m gonna be trapped like a genie, it might as well be in a cave of wonders. Go crazy.”
With a whoop, Olive whapped the privacy screen around her bed, turning it to jade and turquoise. Volunteers appeared, carrying cheap pine chairs and bins of topsoil. As the chairs came in, Olive converted them to oak thrones, positioning them around the big table.
“Don’t stop,” she told Astrid.
“I hear and obey.” Astrid turned to the three pools, cutting a stream of fresh water into the floor and making a water garden on the opposite side of the chamber. Someone brought in the suit of armor, and she chanted it so that fresh air blew from the dyed horsehair plume of its helm. They set it in the center of the shelter, and she grew a stone dais underneath its feet, raising it halfway to the ceiling. She chanted a bicycle wheel so that sunshine emanated from its spokes, then pinned it above the knight with a single tall stalagmite. The room warmed.
Her spirits rose.
Volunteers stepped in to run the chantments and fill the garden plots.
“We bringing in a TV?” someone asked.
“No.” The last thing she needed was the news mumbling and flickering at her all day. “Ilya can dig another chamber for that.”
Outside, in town, Astrid’s ringers were busily working. Her physics tutorial with Katarina was wrapping up. In the seers’ silk tent, volunteers worked steadily on locating people for the Lifeguards to save. Things were quiet in the Octagon—there had been no bombing runs in a week. Mark was using the downtime to set up a “proper” center for gathering and analyzing world news. He was already calling it the Doghouse.
One ringer sat in the old Anglican church, watching the communications volunteers send messages through the magic pipe organ. Another was with Ilya at the far end of the pipeline, watching his team plot the route for their underground tunnel, for the river of magic.
“Astrid?” Katarina said. “Are we still having a science briefing with Astrid Prime?”
“When’s it supposed to be?” She’d lost track of time.
“Any minute now.”
“Yes, come on down,” she said to Katarina. To Olive, she said: “I need a clock by the big table.”
“On it.” Rummaging in a bin of furniture the scavengers had brought, Olive raised a cheap cuckoo clock to eye level and started tapping it with the gavel. Letrico flicked through her, and an ornate wooden grandfather clock grew from the plastic original. It ticked resonantly, standing against the wall.
“Is that enough decorating for now? I have a meeting.”
“Yes. Go back to multitasking yourself to death.” But Olive was teasing now.
Not by fire, not by poison, not by overwork.
Even the grumbles were giving her a hard time.
Relieved, Astrid healed herself yet again before taking a seat at the limestone table.
Katarina gated in, trailed by a dozen scientists. She rolled a map of the West Coast out onto the table. Hand-drawn lines showed the two pipeline routes: Ilya’s tunnel heading east from Indigo Springs, and the Mermaid team’s route as they inched toward Vancouver Island underwater, moving at a rate of forty feet per day. Ilya’s team was faster. They were well out of the contaminated zone, crawling toward Denver, undulating to skirt the towns in their path.
A murmur filled the cave: chatter about vitagua outflow rates, contamination, carbon uptake.
Will should be here, Astrid thought. But Will was at the Chimney, grimly chanting toys. Trying to get better at it, as he should. He had been distan
t since his ex-wife’s murder.
It was hardly a surprise, though she couldn’t help but feel hurt by his withdrawal.
She drew on her sense of After, and the future felt the same. The kids, safe and laughing …
Katarina said: “In the towns nearest the pipeline route, people have seen ghosts. There are reports of cows having two-headed calves. Seven ostriches on a Washington farm starved themselves to death last week.”
“Good things are happening too,” someone put in. “The patients in a pediatric cancer ward in Pendleton went into remission. A number of murderers have turned themselves in.”
“Alchemites are taking credit, of course,” Katarina said.
“Even though the Fyremen are torching them willy nilly?”
It had started in Cleveland, with a nurse. The victim didn’t have any chantments; she was just a woman who had bought Sahara’s line about the Age of Miracles. They flattened her house, dragged her atop the wreckage, and lit her up.
Gilead Landon had been there, whipping up the crowd, recruiting. Attracting a mob of angry young men, he’d preached destruction of everything magical, issuing a public challenge to Roche: Work with me, or get out of my way.
“Astrid? You with us?”
“I’m great,” she said.
Twenty pairs of eyes regarded her dubiously, and there was a roil of pain within her stomach, acid hot, that subsided as she drew letrico into her healing bangle, raising it up so they could see her mending herself.
“Let’s move on to climate change,” Katarina said. “We have volunteer in Northern BC who’s asking—could we use timed heat draws to kill infestation? Some insect…”
“Mountain pine beetle.”
There was a surge of activity at the pipe organ—a lot of messages, coming through fast. In the hotel, Pike cursed.
The Astrid ringer, beside him, said: “What’s up?”
“That Fyreman’s grabbed Janet and run into the forest.”
Astrid drew on the vitagua in the mulched lagoons, chasing a pulse of body heat. She rolled in its direction, washing over a contaminated squirrel. Drawing liquid magic over the struggling animal, she formed another copy of herself around its small body. Squirrel skin grew over the ice-Astrid in a sheath; silky hair broke through its new scalp. The eyes took a minute to grow, but she was getting better at this.
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