Scion of the Fox

by S. M. Beiko

  “It’s not a cop-out, hon,” she said, reaching out to touch the jagged ends of my hedge-clippered ’do. “You know you can always talk to me about them. And that it’s important that you do. You do know that, right?”

  I got that familiar stinging in my eyes and nose when the tears were about to start, but I bit the inside of my mouth to stop them. “Yeah, yeah of course I do, Deedee. It’s not about that.”

  She folded her hands and sat quietly. Even though she wasn’t my mother — and she knew from the get-go it was a hole she couldn’t hope to fill — I still considered Deedee way more than just my aunt. And I was grateful for her presence, especially now, in the midst of so much unspeakable chaos.

  “I’ve just been thinking that, um, maybe their deaths weren’t an accident. You know? I know that you’ll say it’s just a way for me to cope, but, maybe . . . it was because of something else? Some outside force?” With all the papers I’d been forced to write this year, I knew my thesis was pretty floppy without supporting evidence. And visions from firefoxes weren’t exactly scholarly sources.

  But Deedee nodded. “Roan, I know it’s a difficult thing to deal with, and that it always has been.” She put her hand on my shoulder as Phae had earlier that day, same sympathetic I-think-you’ve-lost-it expression on her face, even though I hadn’t said a damn thing about the tidal wave of spirit-crap I was now drowning in. “But thinking like that, dwelling on it, it’ll just leave you frustrated. We can’t know what was going through their minds, or what might have gone wrong when . . . it happened, and we probably never will. All we can do is try to heal and keep living.”

  “Yeah,” I muttered, half agreeing, because that was the mantra I’d lived by and tried to keep close to my chest for so long. But now Sil had opened a devastating can of worms that would change everything. That my parents had a purpose for what they had done. That they had maybe done it to save me. I swallowed. Too many secrets about them were rising to the surface, with far too many plot holes. My parents had been pursued, like I was now, and their mission had become mine. I just hoped that my fate didn’t lie at the bottom of the river beside them.

  And the only person who could maybe give me some info was Arnas, my father’s brother, and probably a Denizen himself . . . but I had a feeling that we were working in opposite directions.

  I came back to the moment when Deedee’s hand found my chin. “Hey, kid.” She smiled at me. “You’ve got so much going for you. You’re doing great in school, you’re clever, and most of all you’ve got moxie. Remember that you can accomplish whatever you put your mind to. You just have to go to class, okay? And if you need anything, we’re always here for you.” As an afterthought she rolled her eyes and said, “Well, when Arnas is done having his out-of-body experience, he’ll jump on board, too.”

  I smiled, because having Deedee behind me did matter. Hearing her say I was going to be okay (even though she really had no clue), it was worth it. “Don’t worry, Deedee. I’ll be fine. School is just stressful, and I guess I wanted a bit of a change . . . with the hair, I mean.”

  She waved me off. “Pah. It’ll grow back. Besides, now we sort of look related.” She got to her feet and flipped the kettle on for tea, snagging two mugs from the cupboard. “Let’s veg in front of the tube for a while, I really need to wind down. Captain Crazypants can clean this all up later.”

  “All for it,” I replied, giving the island a gavel-smack of approval then beelining for the couch.

  “By the way,” she added, stopping me before I could fuse bodily with the sofa cushions. “I made an appointment at St. Boniface with Dr. Yang about your eye. Hope you cleared your schedule for tomorrow.”

  I automatically looked up the stairs, but Sil hadn’t come back. I figured I needed a day off from the shamanistic mysticism that would soon consume all my time. It was strange business that a jaunt to the doctor was now pretty much a vacation, but I’d take it.

  *

  Arnas pulls up to the legislative building. The parking area is deserted, save for the vehicle of the odd overnight security staffer. The building is an eerie megalith, especially after dark, the statues and intricate carvings of gods and historical figures frosted with ice. The shadows make them look sharp, scrutinizing. Unmerciful. Arnas feels their limestone gazes penetrating the SUV and boring straight into him. Spotlights pepper the front and rear façade, not only to present the city’s architectural crowning glory at all hours, but to make sure nothing and no one gets past the eyes in the dome.

  And the eyes are expecting him.

  Arnas tries to get control of his shaking hands and pops the car door open. He shoves his left hand into his jacket pocket, clawing it tightly around Deidre’s phone as he kicks the car door closed and hurries to the building. The other fist grips the bauble around his neck. He steels himself.

  He knows better than to access the building through the back, the much less direct way. No, they would not like that. He’s lucky he even managed to get them to assemble tonight at all, so he’ll do things their way, despite how it makes his soul shrink inside his body.

  As he paces, the figures set inside the looming pediment call to him: the Indolent Man beckoning to the land of promise, the goddess Europa leading the bull, the Lady Manitoba with the rays of sun behind her and the trident in her outstretched hand. And the entwined twins: one the Red River, one the Assiniboine. Both fair maidens, one monstrously feared and the other longed for. Arnas avoids them at all costs.

  It’s the north entrance he seeks, knows that’s what they prefer. The direct approach, the kind that Arnas hates. He climbs the stone stairs with the forgotten speed of his youth, regretting it immediately. The door comes up faster than he’s ready for, and his breath catches. He tries to compose himself as his knock stammers against the glass.

  The young man on security looks up, narrows his eyes. They flit from the screen he was watching to the phone by his wrist. He answers it, meets Arnas’s gaze again, and nods. The door buzzes, swinging inwards. He hesitates but remembers he called this council meeting, and he has worth to them — so he enters, upright, as much as he can manage. He hopes his forthright behaviour has at least curried some favour.

  Arnas approaches the grand staircase, flanked by twin bronze bison guarding darkness. It’s been years since he was last here under cover of night, but those who wait for him show no pretense of giving him a warm welcome. The bison bear down as if they would launch from their marble perches to gore his heart and weigh its value. Its loyalty.

  He glances quickly over his shoulder to find the security guard is watching him closely. His head swivels, eyes bright and piercing. Arnas swallows and wastes no more time, ducking past the staircase and the bison that mind it and walking underneath dark arches until he reaches the white room, round and dimly lit.

  There it lies. The Pool of the Black Star. Traipsed over by thousands of tourists who would never know the implication of the black star painted on the white marble like a compass rose. Arnas circles the star, hesitating. Though some people walk over it and feel a chilly reverence, they could never do what Arnas could inside of it, and for a moment that cheers him — even if what power he has left is borrowed, and dwindling at that. He clutches the trinket at his neck again and swallows.

  Every moment he waits is a moment that pushes their patience. So he exhales, not realizing he’d been holding his breath, and steps inside the star. He knows it’s not just paint; it’s power. He glances up at the circle cut out of the ceiling. He is as ready as he’s going to be. He closes his eyes, steadying his shaking hands as he crosses them, spreads them, and tents his fingers in the way he was taught but has not done in years. “I present this spirit in the hall of the Star, under the gaze of Ancient, as it turns to us all, and by the grace given to the Five that came before us.”

  His hands dance wildly as he invokes what influence he can from the ether. “I call to those loyal to t
his sphere, to rouse and place yourselves on my name, as is my right to ask.”

  Though he is not watching for it, he can feel it happening — the golden circles in the floor coming to light among the marble veins. They wake, orbiting the star, and Arnas inside of it.

  “To the earth that is the element my house bears, yield to my name. Rise.”

  His hands stop. His voice carries the wake of an echo, and when it comes back to him, it sounds as though it belongs to one who knows what he’s doing, who can command respect. But Arnas knows it’s an illusion.

  The tremor in the floor is faint, but Arnas has inherited the keen ability to sense the stone’s ripples using his legs. The black star shifts under him, separating from the rest of the floor as a jagged platform. It ascends through the round alcove above and takes Arnas with it, towards his destination. To anyone else, the brilliant dome atop the Manitoba legislature is a trompe l’oeil, an illusion; there is no floor or chamber beyond the second floor and never was. Arnas’s face, craned towards the ceiling, feels the slight burn as he breaks through the illusion that hides the boundary, his heart thuds loudly in his ears. Because there is and always has been an upper chamber in the dome. A roost. The governing seat of the Owls.

  The star chinks into place in the transparent floor of the Mercury Chamber, the dark, candlelit temple where the current leaders of Manitoba Owl Family, the justice and authority of the Five, confer during times of crisis — and crisis there has been in these parts for some years. Arnas’s hand defensively jerks into his pocket to find Deidre’s phone when he realizes that each of the seven seats surrounding him are occupied, filled with faces sharper than the legislature’s statues.

  “You are lucky that you can still conjure the names and wills of spirits onto you, Arnas Harken,” says a lilting voice from the fourth council seat. “You barely came through the seal unharmed.”

  Whether it was the dread and panic that had distracted him, Arnas only just notices the blood trickling down his face, the smoking singes in his jacket. He smears the blood away, embarrassed. The ghost of a laugh passes through the assembly.

  His shaming finished for now, they resume business. A different voice, female and rigid, echoes from the second seat. “Arnas Harken, former neutralizer to house Rabbit and severer of gifts. You tapped the exiled leader of your House to initiate this council, and as a favour we have accepted. We will hear the case from your lips.”

  Sweat finds the wound in Arnas’s forehead, stinging it with salt. He wants desperately to wipe it away, but he dares not make a sudden move in front of the shining eyes turned on him, the eyes of patient hunters.

  “Council of H-house Owl,” he chokes, “I come before you as near-kin to this season’s toll to be paid to Zabor: my niece, Roan . . .”

  “The Fox-kit,” rumbles the large man from the sixth seat, leaning forward into the low light. “The last of a line of traitors who would have undone our carefully curated peace.”

  “Th-the same.” Arnas tries furiously to master his stammer, wanting to power through his case. “She was marked to be taken last night, after fourteen long years that were g-granted in charity by this council. A-all the s-signs were there, I saw and noted them myself, have been w-waiting all this time, vigilant —”

  “And?” says the voice from the seventh seat, the one raised on a dais at the head of the chamber. Arnas has never seen this council member before, but the whispers about this prodigy, the one Phyr Herself speaks to, were enough to make Arnas’s mouth run dry.

  He ducks his head, wetting his lips. “And, Ascendant, she was not taken.”

  The silence is heavier than the gazes they level him with.

  “Not . . . taken?” repeats the second seat incredulously.

  “This cannot be!” hisses the jowly man from the sixth, his chins rumbling. “She was marked years ago for this season. If she does not go to Zabor, the reckoning will be catastrophic!”

  The third seat speaks for the first time, his Ojibwe accent clear. “How did she come away from the Moth Queen? What power does this traitor-child possess that she could do this?”

  “She must have had help,” muses the fifth. “Though who or what would intervene? And why?”

  “I-I don’t know,” Arnas clamours, trying to reassert his presence and, above all, his innocence. “But . . . I think she has a spirit eye. I th-think someone is preparing her.”

  A current of shock rattles through every seat. At that, the seventh member rises, and the conjecture of everyone beneath him dies. Arnas steels himself for the sentence he is about to bear.

  “Do you love your niece, Arnas Harken?” asks the young Ascendant, the outline of his lithe body shifting apart from the silhouette of the carved Owl, midflight, behind him in his seat.

  Arnas clenches and unclenches his fists. “I don’t —”

  “A simple enough question,” he muses. “Do you love her?”

  Arnas deflects, knowing where this is going. “If the Ascendant thinks I’d risk all our lives to interfere with the plans of the Five —”

  “Don’t presume to know what I think, exile,” he snaps. “You’ve defied the tenets of this council more than once to pursue your own motives. Don’t think we’ve forgotten about the Allen child. That husk around your neck and the stolen power in it marks your betrayal.”

  Arnas is sweating profusely now, despite the coolness of the chamber. He can feel the sweat pooling at the small of his back.

  There is an audible hiss, an undercurrent of voices, yet no mouth moves. Arnas lowers his head.

  “Let me make this clear. Your niece puts us all in danger by virtue of remaining alive. She is more dangerous still, when we do not know who is guiding her or what their motives are — a spirit eye means that the Moth Queen is involved. If she is being used as someone else’s tool, then there is no other choice but to help this girl to her destined end. Though we, of course, cannot intervene ourselves, we must put things into motion. And we cannot do that if your loyalties lie with your traitor-brother’s child instead of the greater good.”

  Arnas finds himself nodding and agreeing perhaps too quickly, willing to say anything, even besmirch his brother’s name, to get this over with. “Y-yes, yes, that’s exactly what I think, Ascendant. For the greater good. All I want is to be of s-service.” Arnas produces the phone from his pocket, bringing the photo up for all to see. “I’ve b-brought it, just like you asked.” He wants to throw himself at their feet and proclaim his obedience, and it takes every fibre in his body to restrain himself, to force dignity into his limbs.

  In a flash of talons, beating wings, and a guttural screech, the phone is snatched from Arnas’s outstretched hand. He recoils, the talons having nicked his skin, either as a warning for having let this happen, or as a show of power. The enormous Owl that bore down on Arnas returns to the seventh seat, form melting back into that of a young man. He scrutinizes the phone.

  “Yes,” he utters. “This will do.”

  The young Ascendant lays his palm over the LCD screen, and when he pulls it away, the image lifts out from the phone, suspended above his hand. Is this an Owl trick? Arnas dares not try to guess or even ask. The phone clatters uselessly to the marble floor, the sound making Arnas flinch.

  The voices that ripple through his flesh fall away, satisfied. “You’ve done a great service to this council and this city, Arnas Harken. Once this issue is resolved, you can look forward to the restoration of not only your power, but your honour, as well.”

  Arnas straightens his back. His power? Dare he hope for an escape from the scrutiny of his Family, and the other Four? Fourteen years of cowering before his peers, cut off from his lineage, had sharpened his desperation — he would do anything to return to the way things were, before his brother’s Fox-wife had meddled in affairs beyond her. Before her stubbornness had cost Aaron his life. What love could Arnas have for a child
from a strange family, a child who was always destined to die?

  “Th-thank you,” he replies, making absolutely sure they don’t question his loyalty again, that they see he is, once and for all, grateful. “I will do whatever it takes to have this matter resolved.”

  Lit by the rotating digital image floating over his outstretched palm, the Ascendant of the seventh seat smiles. “Good.”

  Seeing his face for the first time, Arnas realizes just how young this “young Ascendant” is, and marvels at the power he must possess to hold the highest seat so soon. He has just arrived from his final training and selection abroad, they say, preparing to become the next Paramount of all the Owls. Though his gaze is that of a young man born to lead, he looks no older than Roan herself. And it is haunted, too, for what little experience his few years have afforded him.

  Arnas tries not to think of Roan. This is for the best. The greater good.

  The photo starts spinning, and a howling wind picks up in the temple, screeching around the dome. Arnas braces himself, the council members now standing, humming, chanting, hands outstretched and punctuating the air with gestures imitating ancient symbols. Golden circles incised in the transparent floor beneath them begin to revolve. They are calling them.

  The Ascendant fixes his gaze on the photograph of Arnas’s niece. “We cannot intervene directly — all we can do is aid Zabor and her hunters in taking her quarry. Your task, Arnas Harken, is to put your niece smoothly on the path of her destiny, for which there is only one intended outcome. Can you commit to this?”

  Arnas lowers his arm from shielding his eyes, the wind piercing his ears and face. He knows his vision is not mistaken; the shadows in the chamber are peeling away, taking shape, and rippling around the room at the speed of the wind.

  “Yes!” he shouts over the din, stammer forgotten in the wake of the storm rising around him. “I commit!”

  At that moment, everything stops, suspended in time and the ether, the young Ascendant’s body half transformed — dark wings spread behind him, eyes horrible and cutting, hands cruel talons. He sends Roan’s image into the centre of the shadow-deluge, and Arnas realizes the demons they’ve called are all converging on him. Their scales and jaws and empty gazes, diving in slow motion to devour. And just as he cowers, time triumphantly spins back into motion, and they consume Roan’s picture before they can reach Arnas.