The Brilliant Dark

by S. M. Beiko

  She shook her head. It wasn’t fair that a smart kid like Jet was being denied a proper education. The prime minister, much aged from Dark Day but voted in consistently since he’d steered the ship through the crisis, had paid lip service to acceptance and understanding and fellowship, but Denizens, particularly Owls, were considered a threat. Not all of them were good people. Lots of them were fed up with being treated like criminals for their gifts, their birthrights. Their penchant for control. So regulation was needed. Especially those who could not only read minds, but make people do things against their will. So safer to be cooperative, and perhaps use those gifts for the sake of “the greater good.”

  Otherwise you were “processed.” Saskia had never met a Denizen who had survived having their inherent powers removed, but the government insisted they’d gone on to live better, productive lives.

  Registration. Processing. Othering. None of these practices had ever served any society well. She sat in a classroom day after day, forced to memorize histories bloody with these things, but all she had to do was look out the window, watching history repeat itself.

  Before she knew it, Saskia had passed the point where she and Ella would usually part ways, and for a second she hesitated, looking around, hoping Ella would be there, hidden somewhere, and Saskia could stop worrying for once . . .

  “Saskatchewan!”

  Saskia flinched and turned. A chubby boy with dirty blond, barely combed hair jogged towards her, grinning. He was yanking his jacket on.

  “Cam,” she answered, trying to smile back at him over her rising panic. “Didn’t know you were physically capable of getting up this early.”

  “Oh c’mon,” Cameron panted, catching her up easily. “Don’t act like you haven’t heard it all over the news.”

  Saskia swallowed, wincing. “I was going to see for myself.”

  “Me, too!” He threw an arm around her shoulder, and for a second Saskia forgot how tense she was. “It’s crazy that we’re alive when this is happening. What’s your guess, then? You’ve got a lot of insight into this stuff, with your foster sister and all.”

  She knew he meant well, and there was a lot he couldn’t know about Saskia at all despite their long friendship, but she prickled all the same. “And what, you think that makes me an expert on the end of the world?”

  Cam did up his jacket clumsily, considering. “So you think that’s it, eh?” He grinned again. “Sweet.”

  “Everything’s a joke to you,” Saskia muttered.

  He punched her affably in the shoulder. “And your problem is you can’t ever take one.”

  Cameron Vadaboncoeur was a Mundane, like Saskia. They’d gone to the same school since she’d moved here with Phae and Barton, hung around in the same circles when she wasn’t sneaking off to spend time with Ella. He was friendly but stupid, with delusions of grandeur, and easily led. Saskia never understood why he wasted any time with her — after all, she was aloof and an outcast despite her own brightness. She didn’t fit in anywhere: not a Denizen, despite childish wishes on stars and black moons and birthday candles, and not quite Mundane, either, considering she was raised by, and lived with, Denizens.

  Cameron was obsessed with the Realms of Ancient, which meant he dumped his naïve questions all over her like she was the resident Wikipedia of Ancient. Saskia put up with it to fill the silence . . . that’s what she told herself, anyway, when she had a short fuse, like right now. Really, he was as good a friend to her as Ella. She needed to rein it in.

  “Hey,” he nudged her. “What’s up?”

  She scoffed. “Really, Cam?”

  “I mean aside from the usual.” He rolled his eyes skyward. “We’re all a bit screwed up but you always seemed to be ahead of even me on that curve.”

  Saskia needed to change the subject. She’d wanted to be alone, really see if she could tell the difference in the Darkling Moon’s location in the sky — that’s what the radio had said, that it’d moved, but she’d need more proof than a panicked broadcast. Of course, she didn’t need to go to the Old Leg to see it . . . but a part of her hoped beyond hope that maybe Ella might be there. Instead, here was Cam.

  “It’s my birthday,” Saskia blurted, tucking her short dark hair behind her ear. It was a better save than what really was crowding her tongue, the desire to tell someone, anyone, what had happened last night at the Old Leg, and later beneath it. About what she’d seen in that interrogation room behind the chancellor. What he’d said to her. What he’d offered.

  Instead she upped her pace, cramming those thoughts down deep with the others, but stopped when she realized Cam wasn’t following. She looked back at him on the sidewalk with a raised eyebrow. “What?”

  “Saskatchewan, why didn’t you tell me earlier?” Cam raced back up to her, shaking her bodily like she was an Etch A Sketch; he was big as a bear and Saskia wasn’t exactly sturdy. “Happy birthday, you giant weirdo!”

  Saskia sighed. “Right back at you, nutbar.”

  “This is great, though! I mean, I can’t believe all this is happening on your birthday of all days. You sure you aren’t some kind of Chosen One?”

  Saskia felt like she’d been punched in the gut. “Not me, nope.”

  His dopey grin was quickly eroding her fatalistic thoughts, but she’d have to shake him after they made it to the Leg. Though, maybe she was better off sticking with Mundane company when she was out in broad daylight — she felt like there were eyes on her everywhere.

  “There’ll probably be a lot of people there — maybe I can get them all to sing for you.”

  Saskia rolled her eyes at him, smiled in spite of herself.

  They were getting closer to the Legislative grounds now — the bridge was just ahead, and the Golden Boy statue winked in the rising sun. The Darkling Moon framed it moodily, and Saskia felt a painful squeeze around her ribcage. The building looked so different in the daylight, yet unchanged, as if last night hadn’t made a dent in the regime at all. She hoped she wouldn’t see anything freaky again. Not with Cam here.

  Follow the moth. You must choose. Red sigils cut into the air, their runes a message she couldn’t read, and a sharp sound exploded in her inner ear. Fire and dark wings. She looked away quickly, back to the sidewalk.

  Cam popped his lips. “Don’t tell me you think this is somehow your fault.”

  Saskia whipped her head towards him, feeling sicker. “Why would you say that?”

  He shrugged his big shoulders. “You look more morose than usual, that’s all. Cheer up! Take some excitement when it comes. Besides, you’re seventeen now. I know exactly what I’m gonna do now that I’m seventeen.”

  Saskia frowned. “So you’re in?”

  “Hells yeah!” He pumped his fists. “Mom got the confirmation package in the mail yesterday. I start this week.”

  “Right.” Cameron’s greatest dream was to join the Elemental Task Guard. He’d probably lose it if he found out she’d been offered a job with them only last night, by the chancellor himself. “So you’re going off to fight monsters even before you graduate.”

  “This is the time to sign up, Sask. You really should consider it, what with all that’s going on.” They had a much clearer view of the Darkling Moon now, not obstructed by buildings, the autumn-ravaged trees offering a screen of leafless branches. “I heard someone on the radio say it’s because of these weird cults that have sprung up. The ones worshipping it — you know, the Cluster? So sinister, but also so lame. Then there’s those Denizen extremists making those public political statements. Like those Foxes at the Leg last night, blowing stuff up, did you hear about that?”

  She shrugged. “Whatever. It’s just people acting out. Scared people. Stupid teenagers like us. None of it’s got anything to do with you and me, right?”

  But Cam went on. “Adam Dean saw another one of those river things the other day, when it fr
osted overnight — you said they came out when it got cold, right? When the river starts to freeze? And it would’ve got Adam, too —”

  “Yeah,” Saskia cut him off bitterly, “if that Seal guy hadn’t stopped it. I heard all about it. So where was the Task Guard then? I’m sure they swept in and arrested the Seal the minute they heard about it.”

  Cameron just sighed. “You’re always on their side, no matter what you say.”

  “I’m not on anyone’s side!” Saskia snapped, but she could see his neck colouring like it did when they got into these spats. “The world is crazy, and everything can’t be painted in black and white, good versus evil. Sure the Task Guard sounds like it’s all victory and virtue, but you know less than dick, Cam.”

  They went on in silence after that. Saskia’s temper had gotten touchier recently. They turned onto Broadway after crossing the bridge. “I’m sorry,” she said after a while. “It’s just . . . I’m stressed out.” She wouldn’t say anything more. She was dangerously close to spilling her guts. And for a second, Cam’s face had been the chancellor’s, and all the things she’d wanted to say to that lunatic threatened to burst out. But he’d offered her a job . . .

  “We all are,” Cameron retorted. There were a lot of people there, standing on the open public lawns, amid bronze statues, just outside the perimeter fence, staring up. The crowd was likely still lingering from the press conference on the lawn in front of the Leg, led by the chancellor himself. Saskia was glad she’d missed it. But the rubberneckers were still here, long after the camera crews had left. Staring at the black moon that wasn’t really a moon, just a shadow, hanging over them all.

  Saskia and Cameron stopped, looking up with everyone else. It was a shadow that hadn’t moved in seven years, had stayed fixed in the sky, vigilantly observed by governments and Denizens alike since it’d rocketed out of the Atlantic sea and stayed there.

  But last night it had definitely moved.

  Saskia couldn’t stare at it for long, so she shut her eyes. Felt the pressure around her ribs again and tried to calm herself down. Listen to the signal, the voice had whispered. You must choose whether you answer or not.

  Saskia lurched, and Cam looked away from the sky. “What’s the matter?”

  “I’ve got to go,” Saskia said roughly, heading back for Broadway.

  “I’ll see you at school later?” Cam called.

  Saskia was tired of lying, especially to Cam. He meant well. And she didn’t want him involved. So she sped up.

  Follow the moth, Saskia . . .

  She shook her head. No matter where she went, the dark moon was an eye on her back. The eye of death.

  The Way Ahead

  Solomon Rathgar stared at the open palm of his hand, tracing the lines in it. Lines that had split and creased more in these seven years than all the time before that. He had observed, too, lines cutting his drawn face, as the months crept by. The shadows in it tightening.

  You’ve a long lifeline. Her voice tinkled merrily in faraway memory, mocking laughter in it. I’ll grow mine to match, so you don’t get too ahead of me.

  “Demelza,” he said her name under his breath because it wasn’t enough to think it, anymore. He needed to say it for it to be tangible. For the memory of her to remain.

  “Sir?”

  He started. At his shoulder was the chancellor’s new aide, Mi-ja — how long she’d been there, he couldn’t say. “Nothing,” he answered. “Just an old man, rambling, you see.”

  She gave him a weak smile. An apology. “The chancellor has asked to see you. Shall I help you down there?”

  He’d already known Mi-ja’s reason for coming, but he didn’t say as much. Just smiled back, nodded, and followed her down the long compound corridor, one stiff step at a time. The use of his powers was highly regulated, but he would need to keep them sharp. Especially now that things had been changed drastically overnight. Testing them on the unwitting aide outside of the control zones — really a kind girl, all told — would hurt no one.

  He had hidden the shard of surprise when he’d sifted through what she knew about this summons, and had seen, amongst the cacophony of psychic sensation, mention of Saskia Allen Das — the last person to have seen his son.

  He winced, as he often did, thinking of Eli. When the aide looked up in apparent worry, he shrugged it off and leaned heavier on his cane.

  The corridor was long, lined with vexing, bleach-bright lights reflected back on white and glass the deeper it went. Finally they reached the elevator, climbed in, and it moved quietly lower, lower still, and Solomon stared at the ceiling of the compartment, imagining the shaft above them, feeling the weight of the earth and the distance of the sky.

  He closed his eyes and for a moment he could smell the sea, the salt in the corners of his eyes, the wind a flirtatious punch to the lungs. And he could hear her voice calling above the noise, “. . . and the, what do you call it? ‘The Tube’? How can you stand it? Owls aren’t meant to go underground!”

  Solomon smiled. “And what about your hiding place, in the Fairy Glen? Stuffed into that tiny cave, the size of you.”

  “Fair.” Demelza paused, the wild air playing with her hair as she stared out to the water. She hugged herself tighter, and all Solomon wanted was to reach for her.

  “It feels safe in there,” she said at last, her voice growing more and more distant. “I suppose I feel like the earth can keep a secret the way the sky cannot.”

  Solomon felt a hand on his arm, and he startled.

  “Sir?”

  He shook himself and strode ahead of Mi-ja, through the open elevator door, as if he hadn’t had the wind knocked out of him. “Let’s get to work,” he said evenly, as the aide caught him up.

  The floor was a steep concrete ramp encircling the chamber. It stretched before them, taking up not only this level but the five levels above. Every time Solomon was summoned down here, it was too familiar. It was all a circle, the walls a silo of cables and channels and fuses and all manner of mess. But the irony of it — that the Elemental Task Guard had practically built themselves a summoning chamber — had not been lost on him, nor on the other Denizens trapped in servitude to this mad caper.

  “Rathgar!” bellowed a voice.

  The man himself, Chancellor Grant, was standing on the topmost platform, encircling what was undulating in the core of the chamber, that great turbine, that menace. Where he stood was the bridge, main control, but he was already starting towards a scaffold. “I’ll come down to you.”

  How thoughtful. Solomon smiled briefly, and as Grant made his way towards him, the brittle smile crumbled. “Is there any change after the last power transfer?” he muttered to Mi-ja.

  “Not in the device, no,” she replied. He glanced at her; her mouth was a flat line, face vacant.

  “But something has changed,” he insisted.

  She only swallowed, looking straight ahead. Solomon’s guts twisted, and though he didn’t lean on it entirely, he clenched his cherrywood cane all the harder.

  Grant was a sharp Mundane, and light on his feet. He was down far quicker than Solomon anticipated and was striding towards them. Solomon hadn’t any time for further clandestine questions, so he extended his hand and shook Mi-ja’s. She looked mildly disgruntled.

  “Change is a good thing,” was all he managed to say to her mystified expression before Grant descended on them and extended his hand to Solomon.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant,” Grant said to Mi-ja, dismissing her. The crisp lines of his face stood out as much as his teeth.

  Mi-ja saluted and stiffly left. Solomon tried to put her out of his mind — and what he’d surreptitiously snatched from hers while she’d been distracted by the handshake.

  A signal had come through from the other side.

  He turned to Grant. “How goes the good fight?”

  Grant’s
smile seemed to deepen. “We’re still fighting, which is still good.”

  Solomon hemmed his eyes in, not quite a smile in return. This was their usual repartee, but there seemed to be an edge to Grant’s mania today. “I trust that the rest of your stay here has been uneventful?” Solomon asked.

  They headed towards the bridge above. Solomon assumed they’d take the lift that Grant had come down in, given that Solomon was missing a leg, and the control panel was on the third concentric level. But they passed the lift, the ramp leading them up and around, Grant moving more like an overexcited child than a seasoned militiaman.

  After a beat, Grant answered, “It’s been educational, to say the least, but not without its benefits.”

  Solomon knew about the infiltration. The hack. Knew that Security Control had been “sorted” recently, and those who had been on shift when it happened summarily canned. Apparently an entirely new engineering staff was being brought in, the current one thinned due to lack of results.

  Word was Grant had found someone who could make this horror show of his come to fruition.

  “And you’re sure?” Solomon asked, though it was pretense; he had known Grant for too many years and had been a part of this particular circus since it pulled into Winnipeg, but he wanted to hear it himself. “You think you can do what Allen stopped us from doing?”

  “Better,” Grant replied. Solomon had never seen his eyes shine that way, with more than excitement. Fever. “I know we can. All the work we’ve done, what we’ve sacrificed. It won’t be for nothing, old friend. A message has come through from the other side. The key to opening the door. We’re close now.”

  The confirmation was one thing, but the honorific was what Solomon clapped to — friend. Solomon tried to focus on his breathing and not on the pain shooting up into what remained of his thigh as they climbed. This time he did lean on the cane. Gods, he was getting old. And if Grant was any friend, he wouldn’t make him scale this bloody monstrosity. But deep down, Solomon knew it was some kind of test. So he soldiered on.