by Shaun Barger
Nikolai stared into his drink, watching the ice melt. “Yeah?”
“Ashley . . . she was a real scrapper when she came here for cadet training. She was wild. A genuine southern sorceress—a cowgirl, not a belle.”
Nikolai knew all this, to an extent. Still he leaned in, listening intently.
“You never met her father—your grandfather. I’m sure she never told you about him. Crazy son of a bitch from a long line of soldiers. Hadn’t been a war since before he was born, but he’d wake Red and Ashley at the crack of dawn for ‘training’ every morning—crazy sorts of drills. Make ’em run for miles without shoes before the sun had even risen. Beat ’em if they were too slow. He was a rancher; he didn’t know any battle magic, but he’d read up on tactics and guerilla warfare and the like. Fancied himself a military man. Stupid old bastard.”
Nikolai closed his eyes. He could feel his hands shaking and gripped them tightly around the freezing glass, pressing it against his lap.
“People respond to abuse in different ways,” Jubal said gently. “Your uncle, he grew up quiet. Withdrawn. Ashley told me once that when they were young he’d leave for weeks at a time on hunting trips. That he didn’t much like being around people.
“Your mother, on the other hand, grew up wild. A real hell-raiser. Got in fights all the time. Drank, stole, vandalized. She was lazy when she started her cadet training, but she was so damn brilliant that it hardly mattered. Deadliest sorceress I’ve ever met. Never seen a mage move that fast. Though you and Ilyana come close.”
Nikolai opened his eyes, trying to remember to breathe, and to his horror saw that Jubal was tearing up—fleshy face tight like he was fighting a sob.
“Oh, Nikolai,” he continued, voice cracking. “Your mother . . . she was so special. Like a daughter to me. An angry, vicious little pit-spawn—but she had such a good heart. You’re so much like her.” He laughed, wiping his eyes. “You know more than anyone that she was never a very happy mage. And though I had no idea it was happening, it’s recently come to my attention that she . . . she might have made some of the same mistakes with you that her father made with her.”
Face pressed against the wet moss. Fingers and arms blistering from looping ribbons of flame. Arms bleeding, wrists cracking from strikes too powerful to block.
Oh Disc. Oh DiscOhDiscOhDisc . . . .
“Our healers are the best when it comes to physical ailments. But when it comes to ailments of the mind . . . we always lagged behind the humans. I see a lot of the same unhappiness in you that I saw in her. But this time, I’m not going to ignore it and just hope it goes away.”
“Sir,” Nikolai said weakly. The Moonwatch medallion seemed to weigh a thousand pounds in his pocket. “Lieutenant Hazeal . . . about what he said to me.”
Jubal’s face went blank. “Yes?”
Nikolai reached into his pocket, fingers brushing the freezing enchantments of the half-moon crescent over the star-spangled sky.
“The revolver was my mom’s,” he blurted out, moving his fingers away from the medallion and drawing out his spectacles instead. He took his handkerchief and made a show of nervously wiping them down, even though they were spotless. “I lied, Captain,” Nikolai admitted, heart pounding. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. But I just—I just—!”
Jubal held out hand in reassurance. “Easy, Nikolai. Tell me.”
“He said that the gun was my mom’s, and that she wanted me to have it. He said he ratted her out about something and that’s why she died—that’s why he was being punished. I don’t know how he got the gun, but it seemed like it was controlling him. Torturing him even.”
“Well,” Jubal said. “That . . . clarifies some things.”
Nikolai stared hollow-eyed at the captain, trembling. “Please. I need to know. What really happened? With Hazeal, and my mom . . . my dad . . .”
Jubal let out a long breath, seeming to deflate. “Oh, Nikolai. I’m so sorry that you had to find out this way . . .”
“So it’s true?” Nikolai’s fingers dug into the armrests as braced against the sudden dizziness threating to topple him over.
“This doesn’t leave the room. Understand?”
“Of course!”
“Ashley was . . . an idealist. Your mother knew what was right, and nobody could tell her otherwise. Not even your father, who she adored. Not even me. Or the king.”
He shook his head. “She . . . took issue with some of choices the king made. But she was careful. Smart. Kept her mouth shut. Executed her missions and responsibilities with ruthless perfection, like always. All the while gathering allies and weapons. Right under my damn nose.”
Captain Jubal finished his drink, looking miserable.
“She was going to assassinate the king, Nikolai. Armand was the one who reported her after she approached him. Her only error in judgment.”
“I knew it!” Nikolai said. “Hazeal said that not even the Mage King could stop a bullet from that gun.”
“The revolver,” Jubal said, thoughtfully scratching the stubble on his chin. “Of course. That’s how she was going to kill him.”
“Did my dad know about this?”
“No. But he was there when I tried to arrest her.”
“Tried,” Nikolai repeated evenly.
“Yes, Nikolai. I tried. With all I had. But your mom . . . and your dad . . .” He trailed off. “They weren’t the surrendering type.”
“Oh . . .”
Jubal rubbed a hand across his face, looking unfathomably tired. “Disc forbid you grow up to be an important mage, Nikolai. Because if you do, there will come a time that you have no choice but to do terrible things—all for the greater good. You’ll have made the right choice by doing so, but that won’t make it any easier.”
“Do you think . . . what she did to me . . . do you think the revolver made her do it?”
Jubal took a few long moments to consider the question. Then, eyes heavy with regret, he shook his head.
“I’m sorry, Nikolai. Ash only did what Ash wanted to do. She never would have let it control her.”
“Yeah,” Nik said, shrinking in on himself. “You’re probably right.”
“Nikolai . . .”
He looked at the captain, clearing his throat as he forced himself to sit upright. “Sir. I’d like to request some time off, if that’s all right.”
“Of course,” Jubal said in a rush. “I was going to suggest that very thing.”
“I just need to get away from the capitol for a while. I’ve got a lot of dangling threads back in Marblewood. Hardly kept in touch with anyone. And I . . . I . . .”
The captain dismissed his explanation with a wave.
“Take a month. There’ll be some light responsibilities, but only if you feel up to them. Uninterrupted pay, and time to . . . reconnect.”
“Thank you, sir. I really appreciate it.”
“No, Nikolai—thank you. Your honesty and trust means a great deal.”
Nikolai reached into his pocket—the slick surface of the Moonwatch insignia burning the tips of his fingers with icy heat—and felt ashamed.
“Likewise, sir.”
* * *
Everything that Nikolai owned fit easily into one bag.
He sat on the narrow bed in his room in the barracks, turning the medallion over in his hands, furious at himself.
He should have come clean. Should have finally handed the insignia over to Captain Jubal and forgotten all about the damn thing. He never should have taken it to begin with. Never should have touched the revolver, or learned that fucking spell.
Hazeal may have been right about his mother, but Jubal’s library? Maybe Nik had missed something, but he hadn’t seen any evidence of the promised villainy.
Yes, Jubal basically admitted to killing his mother. But no matter how Nikolai looked at it, killing a dangerous, high-ranking traitor who refused the chance to surrender peacefully was neither murder nor butchery.
He’d been staring at the Medallion
for nearly twenty minutes now, trying to decide whether or not to bring it with him to Marblewood. Even now, after everything Jubal said, lingering voices still whispered paranoid accusations of conspiracy. Of murder, and atrocity.
In the two years since he’d joined the Edge Guard, Jubal had become the closest thing he had to a father. More than his uncle Red, who’d barely muttered more than a handful of words to Nikolai on any given day, even on the rare nights he came home before Nik had gone to sleep.
Nikolai wanted no part of his mother’s legacy or post-mortem schemes. His time in New Damascus had been the closest he’d come to being happy in a long time. The Edge Guard was his home. His family. And he’d almost thrown it all away over the crazed accusations of a man who tried to kill him.
He’d loosened a floorboard under his bed and masked it from scans with a few choice enchantments. A paranoid habit he’d picked up from Albert, who was as terrified of losing money as the covetous dragons of old.
He yanked it open angrily and cast the medallion into the darkness with a noise of disgust. Nobody would ever find it there. He could move it when he returned to New Damascus—maybe go throw it in a gutter somewhere. But for now, this would do.
He agonized for long minutes outside of Ilyana’s door. She’d be asleep now, napping after a long morning shift. He considered waking her up to say goodbye, going so far as to raise his knuckles to rap against the polished wood before deciding against it.
In his other hand, he held a note.
He’d scratched out half a dozen drafts: A goodbye. A thank-you. Something funny. Something somber. A long-winded reflection of their friendship, and how much she’d come to mean to him.
But as he wrote, his thoughts kept drifting to Astor, and the Moonwatch medallion under the floorboard, and to all the people in Marblewood he’d be seeing again for the first time since he became a full wizard, and he just couldn’t get the words right.
In the end, he left a simple note.
Ilyana,
Going back to Marblewood for a month of rest, relaxation, and crushing boredom. Captain’s orders. Lucky me, right? Didn’t want to wake you. I’ll call once I’m settled.
—Nikolai
He slipped the note under Ilyana’s door and went back to his room.
Neither she nor Albert knew that he had almost died the previous night in the Noir District, thank Disc. He doubted Ilyana would react well to the news that after she’d rejected his romantic advances he went to go mope in a dangerous slum where he was shot, stabbed, and beaten.
She might think he’d purposefully put his life at risk as a suicidal response to her rejection. Or worse—that he’d done it hoping she’d have a change of heart after he almost died, like some sort of manipulative psychopath.
The thought sent him reeling with anxious self-loathing.
He shoved the feeling aside, taking a deep breath to calm himself. None of that mattered now. Whatever Nik and Ilyana might be when he returned—friends, lovers, or coolly polite coworkers—they could cross that bridge when they came to it.
For now, it was time to go home.
IV.
LITTLE SWANS
It was the end of the world, and twelve-year-old Jemma Burton was wearing pink.
A pink leotard. Pink tights. Pink ballet shoes slung over her shoulder by pink ribbons—pristine Air Jordan Retros on her feet the only break in color. She walked across the lush and largely empty academy campus on her way to after-hours dance practice with Eva Colladi, the wealthiest, most beautiful girl in the world, and was trying very hard not to be jealous.
There was an inhuman perfection to Eva. She was otherworldly—tall and pale—her hair a thick cascade of raven curls, like the dream of what a fairy-tale princess might look like.
But the most striking thing about Eva Colladi was her eyes. Piercing, hypnotic sapphires full of joy and kindness, and this smug sort of amusement—like she understood what she saw in a way that no one else ever could. Like she shared an inside joke with the universe.
There was nothing natural about her impossible perfection, however. Her beauty, athletic prowess, and IQ in the low 200s were all a carefully constructed product born from generations of cutting-edge genetic manipulation. Each new generation tweaked a little closer to perfection. She didn’t even need to sleep unless she chose to.
It was far from legal, but who would question the Colladis?
None of this had anything to do with why Jem was feeling jealous, however.
“Come onnnn,” Eva said, nudging Jem’s arm. “You can’t hide it from me, I know you’re pouting. Jem, you look way better as the White Swan anyway—I’d look like a freaking ghost wearing all that white, I’m too pale, but her costume looks stunning with your complexion! That’s probably the only reason they chose me for Odile. Aesthetics! So don’t be mad at me, pleeeasssee—you know I can’t take it. You know!”
“I’m not mad at you,” Jem said, giving Eva a sharp look. “Though you know that would be a really stupid reason, right?”
“Of course!” she said in a rush. “I’m sorry—what a totally idiotic thing to say! What would I do without you, my Jiminy Cricket? My Jem-iny Cricket! I’d be garbage without you, you angel made flesh.”
Though nobody else on campus (or anywhere, really) had mods as sophisticated as Jem or Eva, Eva’s genetic alterations made her superior in ability and intellect to Jem in almost every way.
But not with dance.
With dance, they were peers. Nearly equals—and Jem was confident that at least in this she was better than Eva. It had to do with their egos, Jem thought. Eva Colladi was so firmly confident in her superiority in all things that she never worked quite as hard as Jem. And Jem knew, without a doubt, that her Swan Lake audition had been ever so slightly better than Eva’s.
So why hadn’t they given Jem the part?
Jem rubbed her temples. Her skull was throbbing, like she was on the verge of a migraine. One final cherry to top off an already crappy day.
“Ma chère,” Eva said, spinning gracefully to impede her passage. “My little swan.” She took Jem by the shoulders and leaned close to look deep into her eyes, their noses almost touching. “I will turn down the part, I don’t care who plays what. You deserve it, I’ll call them out, I’ll quit ballet forever, I swear to God I’ll—”
“No, no, no, that’s stupid,” Jem said, trying not to laugh. It was impossible to stay mad at Eva. She was too much of a sweet little weirdo.
“Good.” Eva grinned and linked arms with Jem as they resumed their trek. “Besides! They almost never get separate dancers for Odette and Odile. They were probably just scared that my parents would throw a fit if they didn’t give me a lead part, which is ridiculous! You know my dad would never use his influence to give me an unfair advantage in anything. He already did that before I was born, he always says, and never again! He’d rather die than raise a spoiled daughter, no sir. They both should have been you, but that’s why I think they split the parts. And Odette does have more dancing, doesn’t she?”
She rambled on cheerfully as they walked, Jem occasionally interjecting.
For all of Eva’s genetic and cybernetic advantages, she’d always been something of an outsider. Most of the other girls in their academy found her off-putting, if not outright annoying. She always talked so fast, too fast for most people to follow, her brain a million places at once.
But even if Jem didn’t have the intellectual advantages of Eva’s genetic tailoring, Jem’s incredibly powerful mods made conversing with most other people a frustratingly sluggish endeavor. So she rather enjoyed Eva’s fast-talking, rambling ways, discussing physics one second, then politics the next, then history or robotics or VR games and holo-dramas or whatever super-sexy pop star Eva had fallen madly in love with that week and would totally make her dad introduce her to the moment she turned eighteen and was old enough to date.
Jem was Eva’s only friend, really. And though Jem, unlike Eva, had plenty of
friends outside of their tight-knit little duo, Eva was her favorite person by far. Jem’s father was a high-ranking senator who had served in the military with Eva’s father when they were young, and they’d been like brothers ever since. As such, Jem and Eva had been raised as sisters.
They’d grown up together—Eva always one step ahead of Jem in all things, but patiently, stubbornly loving and supportive to her natural-born friend since before Jem could remember.
They’d been six years old when the Colladis installed Jem and Eva’s cybernetic enhancement mods, and Jem—who had every memory since then stored in perfect multidimensional full-sensory recall unless she specifically chose to erase them—remembered clearly the thrill she’d felt at being able to finally catch up to Eva. In some regards, at least.
All the girls in their academy were affluent and politically important enough for advanced mods, but none of them came close to the processing power of Jem and Eva’s, crafted especially for them by Eva’s mother and father—the doctors Colladi.
A flock of multicolored neon pixies zipped past Jem and Eva, trailing light as the AI controlling them hummed and chanted a complex song through dozens of tiny mouths.
Eva stopped rambling midsentence to join their song, harmonizing, hand raised to feel gossamer wings brush across her fingers as they passed, her big blue eyes sparkling, delighted with their light.
“It’s beautiful, Titania!” she called after the flock, who circled back, hovering all around them.
Titania was an AI who had been hired as a member of security for the academy, the eyes of her little robotic fairies spread out across the campus, ever watching. These colorful little creatures were only a part of Titania’s complete flock. A Synth’s robotic body—or bodies, as was the case for AIs like Titania—was an important expression of individuality for AIs, and an important statement to the humans they interacted with on the physical plane.
“Thank you, Eva,” one of the pixies said with a tiny voice, all of them preening at the compliment, their little faces smiling. “I’ve been working on it all day.”
