by Jenn Stark
“Stopped from what, exactly?” This time, the question was not asked by me but Nikki, her face harsh with anger. “You’ve been feeding Viktor information all this time, but he’s never once struck out directly at Sara. What’s his game? What is he after?”
The Fool was now drifting through the center of the courtyard, slowly approaching the center statue in an almost lazy spiral. He paused when he reached the effigy, drifting his hand over the Magician’s upraised arm, brushing off a fallen leaf.
“The Emperor, in every incarnation since the dawn of the Council, has always wanted one thing. Dominion. Whereas the Magician was unfailing in his pursuit for balance, the Emperor sought only rule. This Emperor is no different from any other, but unlike previous Emperors, Viktor Dal lacks any respect for human life. There is no casualty too great for him if it is in pursuit of his cause of rule. He is without compassion, without remorse. Without mercy. Viktor has always been this way.”
I took a step forward. It was time we learned the truth.
“What happened to you, Simon, when you ascended?” I asked. “What is it that Viktor is making you pay for?”
The Fool turned toward me, his face still guileless, though his animated eyes were bleak. “Viktor found me six months before the Magician knew I existed,” he said. “He told me he saw potential in me, knew of my gifts, and knew of my intellectual capacity. My love of technology, games, electronics. He also knew what I craved—knowledge, in part, but also a heightened state I could only get through cocaine. So much energy! So much fire. The combination made me unstoppable with technology…absolutely unstoppable.”
“He made you an addict,” I whispered, my heart twisting for the Fool despite his repeated betrayals.
He sighed. “I was already on the path—controlling my hunger, maybe, but that didn’t change the fact of who I was. Viktor fed that addiction, until I became so dependent on him both for knowledge and for drugs, that I was willing to do anything. Anything. Then he brought to me a challenge, an opportunity, that even in my strung-out state I could understand. He would mask the symptoms of my addiction, then introduce me to the Magician, in a way that the Magician would never know it was him. And if the Magician saw in me what Viktor had, he would elevate me to the Council. Because the Magician was desperate to add to the Council’s ranks. Even then he saw the storms coming. Even then he was looking to find allies against that storm. Viktor knew that when Armaeus saw me, he would see an ally.”
“But not if you were a junkie,” I guessed.
“No,” the Fool said. “Not if I was a junkie. So he told me that there was a way to take the worst part of me away from me and put it in a place where it could do no harm. He said he had one task for me, and if I could do that task, he’d make all the rest happen. And I… I agreed. I don’t remember much of what happened after. He gave me something to unroll, and there was an explosion, and suddenly I was running, running as fast as I could. And at the same time, there was something running away from me. Running into the fire. I only looked back briefly, then it was gone. I woke the next day in front of my computer, and a man walked up to me dressed in thousand-dollar shoes and a four-thousand-dollar suit. And I knew that day was the luckiest day of my life. I honestly didn’t remember much of what had gone on before, so much of it was…sort of lost. But slowly, very slowly, it came back to me.”
“The fact that you’d been…split. Literally. The worst of you swept away.” I wanted to hold on to my anger at Simon, my outrage, but I couldn’t. I could so easily see how Viktor had pulled him along, teasing and tricking him into betrayal after betrayal, even to himself.
“I hadn’t thought it would be like that,” Simon whispered. “I don’t know what I thought, but…not that. Not understanding that I’d willingly walled a part of myself away when it was…it was all me. My flaws. My self. And now it’s gone. Lost forever.”
I straightened, opened my mouth to contradict him, then shut it. Now was not the time.
Simon shuddered. “When Viktor returned to the Council a few months ago, he, ah…he helped me remember the rest. What I’d done, what else I’d promised him I’d do, if he ever asked.”
There was a long moment of silence in the courtyard. I found myself thinking of every conversation I’d ever had with Simon, every shared confidence, every plan, every desperate plea. How many of those had made it to Viktor’s door? The very thought made me sick.
“Why are you telling me this now?” I asked quietly. “What’s changed?”
The Fool sighed. “At first, I expected you to rise up against Viktor. When you realized what he was capable of, what he had done. But you didn’t do that.”
“You expected me to take out a member of the Council?” I asked defensively. “I wasn’t strong enough for that. Not back then.”
“You weren’t,” he agreed simply. “But I knew that you would be. So I created this place for when you were.”
“And Hayley Adams?” Nikki demanded. “What about her?”
“Viktor again, at the beginning,” the Fool said. His eyes flashed now, anger kindling in them. “Viktor asked me to contact her, keep track of her. But the Magician was already beginning to suspect that something was up, and, well, he and I have become friends, sort of. When Viktor returned…”
“Yeah. Ain’t no way the Emperor was putting up with that bromance,” Nikki weighed in.
Simon shook his head. “I had to do something. I figured I would recruit Hayley to be a beta tester for Mongol Horde, that I could keep an eye on her that way. But once she got into the game, even though she wasn’t really a gamer of any value, she was smart, she was fast, and she sure was Connected, though she didn’t seem to realize it. She found the portal into Arcania almost immediately and pushed through everything I’d built. Not picking up the underlying messages that were just for you, but finding things I hadn’t even realized I was putting in there. Things from a time before I became the Fool.”
“How is that possible?” Nikki asked sharply. “You built the game, and you’re not using anymore. How could you not know what you’re coding?”
“Sometimes you go into a different state, is the only way I know how to describe it. Sometimes, when that happens, stuff gets coded that when you look at it later, you don’t know where it came from.” He glanced again to me. “Hale found a doorway to Shambhala—she couldn’t open it, but she found it. I had no freaking idea that was even in there, but I knew you would. And you did. I still haven’t gotten it out of Hale what she saw in there, but—”
“Wait a minute,” I snapped. “You don’t have her? You don’t have Hayley?”
“Well, duh, no.” The Fool looked genuinely confused. “Why would I have her? Last I heard, the Magician had secured her in some hotel room. She was safe, and I couldn’t get to her—didn’t want to get to her, truth be told, not until everything calmed down.”
But I wasn’t listening to the Fool anymore. Instead, I was turning around, then around again. I knew where Hale was, now. And who was waiting for me with her.
“Okay, we need to get out of here,” I said. “Where’s the Emperor’s Tower?”
The Fool looked genuinely panicked. “What are you talking about?”
“You built back doors from the game into every one of the Council domains, right? Because you could. Because that’s what coders do. And that means you built one into Viktor’s too, never mind how dangerous that was. Does he know you did that? Does he have anyone guarding that doorway?”
“Well, yeah, I did, but you can’t go in there—not from here,” the Fool said, his eyes wide. “You can’t—he’ll figure out that I have had access. He’ll think I was spying on him!”
“Were you?”
“No—yes! Only a little!” the Fool spluttered. He’d backed up from me, but I didn’t have time for his dithering, not now, when I finally understood what for so long had been hiding in plain sight. I’d held the Council up as larger-than-life demigods and considered myself some sort of poo
r relation. But that wasn’t the way it was going to be anymore.
Taking a few fast strides forward, I collared the Fool, then yanked him toward the gates of the Magician’s domain. Without speaking, Nikki and Brody moved with me.
“Okay, Simon,” I said as we cleared the gates. “You’ve come this far, and you have only a little bit further to go before you’re in the clear, I promise. Take me to the Emperor’s tower.”
“But—but you can’t! You can’t!” he spluttered, even as I pulled him along into a halting, shambling trot. He kept protesting all the way back into the forest. Then finally, with a sob, he grabbed my arm and started to run.
Behind us, in the empty courtyard, the hollow-eyed Magician stared after us for a long, long time.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The back entry to Viktor’s lair was, predictably, directly through the front door of the Emperor’s black tower in the Arcania game, which the Fool and I reached even before Nikki and Brody, despite Brody’s galloping horse.
“Exactly how many of my abilities did you actually put into this game?” I demanded, turning to watch the others race up to us. “Because newsflash, extreme speed is not something I usually have in my back pocket.”
“I added skills that make sense inside the game,” the Fool said, but he was flapping his hands at me in disavowal. “You’re wrong, though. You do have speed. When you were in Germany, running through that castle, you covered way more ground than you should’ve been able to. Don’t you remember that?”
I scowled at him. I did remember that, now that he mentioned it. At the time, I assumed it was just an adrenaline kick. Also at the time, I was busily trying to ignore any of my newfound abilities. I grimaced. How many opportunities had I wasted, waffling over who and what I really was?
“And you’ve shared all my abilities to Viktor as well?” I snapped.
“I didn’t have any choice,” the Fool practically wailed. “I don’t even know what Viktor had over me, specifically. I mean yes, I was an addict. Did I commit crimes while under the influence? Had I killed people? I honestly have no idea. When Viktor tore that part of me away, I might as well have been the Fool. It was like stepping off a cliff into a complete unknown.”
“And he was already planning then to take down the Magician? That’s a pretty long game. I wasn’t even born then.”
The Fool snorted. “You weren’t supposed to be born at all, you know. The Hermit taking up with Lilith was not in the Emperor’s playbook. He had no idea how powerful you were when he first ran across you, or he wouldn’t have stopped at blowing up your house.”
“He didn’t just blow up my house,” I said, shoving away the knot of emotion that clawed at my throat. “He…” I swallowed hard. “My mother.”
“What?” Simon blinked at me. “That, um, wasn’t Viktor. Seriously. Not that he didn’t try to kill your foster mom, but he wasn’t the one who succeeded.”
“Stow it, Simon.” All the rage I’d buried for the past several months resurfaced. Viktor might not have killed Sheila Rose Pelter directly—I still didn’t know who’d ordered that hit. But his actions had put the woman I’d known as my mother in danger, and I’d never held him accountable for it—never even challenged him about it.
Maybe Sariah was right. Maybe along with all the bad that had been stripped away from me when I was seventeen, some of my strength had as well. I could have tried to avenge my mother earlier. I hadn’t been that weak.
Regardless, I definitely wasn’t weak anymore. No, this was better. Now I understood my powers, I better owned my powers. And the long-simmering anger that had never had any true outlet was now building to a full head of steam.
Nikki and Brody crested the horizon and came thundering toward us. Within moments, we all stood in front of Viktor’s tower, the enormous black monolith looming over us.
“So what are we going to run into on the other side?” I asked. “Does the Emperor know we’re coming?”
“Does he for sure have Hayley?” Nikki put in.
“And what about those demon dudes Sara brought back?” Brody asked. “Are they still his personal armed guard?”
“Aigh!” the Fool said, flapping his hands again, this time at Brody and Nikki. “Viktor might be expecting you. I’m telling you, though, I have no idea if he has Hale, and as to the djinn, his hold on them started loosening the moment they remained on this side of the veil, after the children were set free. They realized pretty quickly that their time here was limited. And they’ve been doing nothing else but researching ways to stay.”
“To stay,” I repeated, not surprised.
The Fool nodded vigorously. “The Magician says they can’t. The Devil says they might. And the Emperor has told them he can banish them back himself at any time, unless they do what he says. Nobody knows for sure, I don’t think.” He cocked his head, considered the question further. “Except Death, maybe. And she’s not in Vegas right now.”
I turned to Nikki. “Are you still in contact with Warrick?”
She shook her head. “Not as much since I’ve become an Ace, now that you mention it. I assumed it was because we were both busy, but now…” She tapped her jaw. “I wonder if the big lug was afraid of learning something that he’d be bound to tell the Emperor. I’d never even considered that.”
Brody was looking at Nikki with undisguised alarm, no doubt picking up on the affection in her voice. “He’s a demon, Nikki,” he said, as if this announcement was supposed to give her pause. “You can’t have a demon as a boyfriend.”
“And I am in no mood to get a lecture from you, sugar lips.” Nikki pointed at him without heat. In front of us, Viktor’s tower seemed to shiver a little in the bright sunshine. “You maybe wait and see what the next few days brings to your doorstep before you start being all Judgy McJudgy Pants.”
Brody rolled his eyes. “I’m working with a twelve-year-old,” he muttered.
“A very fine twelve-year-old,” Nikki sniffed. “Okay, let’s get out of here.”
As I stared at Viktor’s domain, my mind working through what we’d do once we crashed through it, Nikki slapped her hands on her hips, swishing in her long gown.
“And Simon, or avatar of Simon or whatever you are, thanks for the Empress clothes. Not really my thing, but they sure are pretty.”
The Fool grinned at her. “Well, about that—”
There it was again. Another shiver.
“Hey, you guys see that?” I asked, frowning as the building settled back into place. Blazing sunshine now glinted off it. “Did this thing just move?”
The Fool looked up, squinting. “Nothing moves in the game unless there’s some new development on the field. Arcania is a dynamic environment. It shifts and reacts to how many players are in the game.”
The building shuddered again, for longer this time, and the Fool turned around, shielding his eyes against the definitely over-bright sun. I glared up at the sky and noticed that we were directly opposite the gray Tower where we’d entered Arcania. The Sun was beating down on us in front of the Emperor’s domain, whereas to the far right, the Moon reigned supreme, rising now in its corner of the world while the Sun held dominion over here. Beneath the Moon, instead of the twin towers, stream, barking dogs, and weird giant lobster from its traditional Tarot design, rested the stone effigy of the Magician’s glass-and-steel palace.
“I can’t see,” the Fool said petulantly, still trying to peer into the distance. “I freaking designed this game myself, but I can’t see!”
“There’s someone coming.” Brody, still atop his warhorse, turned and headed for a nearby rise, as if he’d been born to ride.
“Okay.” I nodded sharply, glancing back at the Fool. “What else do we need to know? And spill it fast.”
“There’s so much! There’s simply so much.” The Fool really did look distressed, and Nikki stepped toward him, first patting him on the shoulder, then squeezing his arm. The Fool whirled, his eyes going bug-eyed, but she didn�
�t let go.
“I didn’t—I didn’t program for this!” he squawked. She towered over him, though, her grin turning fierce.
“Consider me your newest mod,” she said, even as Brody started howling at the top of the ridge. We all turned, Nikki releasing the Fool. Brody wheeled his horse around and came galloping pell-mell toward us, looking so much like the Knight of Swords that he could have posed for the card himself.
“They’re coming—they’re coming!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs, but his words made no sense for another moment. At first all I could hear was the thundering of Brody’s horse’s hooves—a sound that seemed far too loud for one pony, but then Viktor’s tower shuddered again—and again.
And then we saw them.
“What in the hell—” Nikki began, but the Fool suddenly backed up, stepping into the shadow of Viktor’s tower.
“How are there so many?” he gasped.
How indeed. An entire horde of avatars summited the ridge and began pouring down toward Viktor’s tower like an unchecked flood. They were from every race and age, it seemed. Not only the young, but older ones as well. I had no idea if this was representative of who was playing the game, or if, somehow, these players had found a way into the Fool’s construct bodily, much as Nikki, Brody, and I had.
Brody, still racing, arrived at Viktor’s tower a good thirty feet before the rest of the madding crowd.
But only thirty feet.
“Stop!” I screamed, and flung my hands wide, more in self-defense than anything else. With a burst of heat, my hands erupted into blue-white balls of flame, and the crowd rushing toward us suddenly stopped. Not in the normal way of a crowd stopping either, where some sprawled forward and others were trampled. No, this could have been an if-then statement coded into the game: If Sara’s hands go up, Then everyone stops and waits.
“You can’t follow us in here,” I ordered as Brody leaned down from his saddle, dropping the pack at my feet. “It’s not that we don’t need your help, but we don’t need your help here.”
