Bleeding Out (21 page)

Oh, my building. You have known me since I was young, and before that, you knew my mother. I love you. Wake up and show yourself. Let your surfaces roar. Let the basements bare their teeth. Let every trace within you, every piece of evidence, wake up and remember what it is. Oh, my building. Now is the moment. You are not simply one building in a terminal city. You are my building, and I see your naked battlements. We matter to each other. We are tame to each other, like princes and foxes. I would recognize you in any light. Oh building, we’re so close—look, we’re touching now. Wake up, beautiful.

It works. The building rouses. A current passes through it, and suddenly, I can see the earth materia in the walls, clear as gold in water. I hear the thundering of the windows as they come undone. I feel everything around me remembering its potential.

Then I hear a sound that does not belong.

It’s like a roaming jigsaw.

Arcadia is outside.

She appears in the entrance, flushed and hungry. Detritus whirls around her. The building isn’t just allowing itself to be devoured. It’s throwing things at her. It’s screaming at her. But it’s not enough.

She is death in a doorway. She is more powerful than whatever miracle battery we were hoping for. She wears her helices on the outside of her body, which glow, like a necklace of coals. Her aperture seems big enough to swallow the entire room. I raise my athame. I don’t feel confident.

“Oh,” she says. “Good. Both of you are here.”

“You will not take me,” Ru says. “I will not return to my world in chains, as your experiment.”

“You misunderstand.” Arcadia ignores the outraged chairs and filing cabinets that swirl around her. “I have not come to collect you. Why do you think I am here, Tess?”

“Because you can’t let anything go?”

“Because the peace is over. The agreement that we made with your ancestors has become void. Just like Lord Nightingale, the Bercilak-demon, the Manticore—all
dust. We tried it your way for a thousand years. We let you handle things. You could barely protect yourself from the night. And the necromancers were no better. They wilted after centuries of being ruled by a despot.”

“And your plan now is—what—to kill us both? You’re really going to kill your own sister?”

“You were never part of the family.”

“No. The problem is that you could never keep me out. I kept looking for my father, even after your nightmares, even after my mom lied to me to make things better. I kept looking. That only proves that I really am his daughter.”

“You were never anything.”

“That Manticore told me that I was. Mr. Corvid told me that I was. Even Basuram recognized me. Obviously, I’m something, Arcadia. That’s what pisses you off. I matter. All of my families love me, or else I would never have survived this long. Even he loves me.”

“He sent me to kill you.”

“I don’t think so. He would have come himself.”

“I am his general. I make these decisions.”

“Tess—” Lucian begins. There’s fear in his voice.

“No.” I raise my athame higher. I feel the building listening, ready to follow my move. I’m not afraid. “I said this was the moment, and it is.”

“When I pass through you,” Arcadia says, “it will be like you never existed. No part of you will remain as evidence. Are you ready?”

I feel both Ru and Lucian drawing power on either side
of me. I feel the presence of those who love me, even if I can’t hear them. I remember what I thought when I first stepped into this building, years ago, when I was so young and nothing but beautiful doors. I’m thinking the same thing now.

This really is what I was born to do
.

“Are you ready?” I ask her.

Uncertainty flashes across her eyes for a second. Then she moves. I feel the heat of her edges. Oh, my sister. You can take me, but not them. You will never have my little gods. I love them too much. I open myself completely to every substrate. I whisper to my athame:

Now is the moment. When I die, everything that I am will burst into light and angry neutrinos. It belongs to you. The building is listening. You must strike with all the power I have left. You must end her.

I look at Lucian. Everything I can’t say is in my glow. I smile. I beg the building to protect them both.

Arcadia falls upon me, and I aim for her heart.

Light breaks everywhere. I feel incredible pain as my athame sings. My bones are wind. I let myself scatter.

But I don’t. I spin. I am also a cyclone, or part of me is. Every molecular bond shears from the impact. I spin until our orbits match, until I can see the division of her rings. I flatten to a wave. I’m about to lose myself completely in her, when a voice says:

“Stop.”

I stop spinning, but I don’t know if I’m alive or
dead.

The pins and needles are so bad that I can hardly move. I feel cuts on my face, my arms, every part of me, but they’re shallow. I’m looking into Arcadia’s eyes. The brilliance of her hate drives her, and she continues to circle, but she’s slowed down. I look to my left, which takes a lot of effort. Lucian and Ru are unconscious on the ground. Most of the debris that was whirling around my sister has now settled to the floor. There are enough mundane objects to build several offices, but they’re burnt and pulverized, so you’d have to get creative if you were going to try.

“Thank you for listening,” the building says.

The lights are still out, but there’s a voice coming through the PA system. The voice speaks slowly and precisely, as a person often does when using a second language.

“That was ugly for a moment. It was difficult to tear you apart. But I see that the damage is minimal.”

“Who is speaking?” I ask. “Is this the building?”

“You know who I am.”

My breath catches. “Father?”

“You look good. I see you have grown up.”

“Are you here?”

“Yes and no. I am here enough for us to talk.”

“Then please tell her to stop trying to kill me.”

“Arcadia, you should go.”

“Father—”

“You have done enough. Go.”

She begins to say something. Then she just looks at me, once, before spinning herself out of sight. All the metal objects breathe a sigh. Lucian and Ru show no signs of waking up. It’s just me and his voice.

“Is the tapestry right?” I ask.

“It certainly tells a good story. Did you like it?”

“I suppose you planted the poem.”

“No. That was her idea. Obviously, there could be no public information about who she really was. But she did like poetry, and she wanted to leave a riddle. I think it is safe to say that most people would not translate a fragment written in eleventh-century Zaragoza. But you did.”

“Mia did.”

“I would like to meet her someday.”

“I don’t think I want her anywhere near you.”

“I hold no malice toward your family. On the contrary. I am proud of what you have created. I am glad that you are not alone. You cannot imagine how lonely it is to be this old.”

“We’re not talking about your golden years. Did you kill Lord Nightingale?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because he asked me to.”

“He asked you to cut his throat?”

“You have to understand that when I met Theresa, she was out of her mind. She was destroyed by her own family. Her brother, Alfonso, had routed her in battle. She had lost Portugal, and all she had to look forward to were days of exile with her consort, far from the politics of Lisbon. That was why she turned to necromancy. She wanted the throne back at any cost.”

I frown. “But—she died, became a man, and moved to Trinovantum. What did that have to do with getting back Portugal?”

“Nothing. When we gave her the city to rule, she forgot about her old throne. Her body did not change immediately. But over the centuries, she lost her old self and took on a new one. The city and its power transformed her into a king. But a king should not rule for a thousand years. They lose their stomach and make bad decisions.”

“They make treaties with vampires.”

“Exactly.”

“So this is a conservative thing. Lord Nightingale wanted to bring demons and humans closer together, but it was more profitable for you to keep them apart. I suppose you killed Luis Ordeño for his part in that as well.”

“You are as paranoid as your sister. No. Ordeño died because he was trying to make a deal with the Manticore. Like many others, he thought he could use the old creature’s power, and that was his mistake. I have never been opposed to integration. Theresa was the one who resisted the treaty, as she resisted change of any kind.”

“But I’m supposed to believe that she asked you to kill her.”

“She called for me. I found her in the library, reading a book of
jarchas
. She said she was too tired. It wasn’t fair that the others had finally died and she was still here. She knew that her people were changing, that her city no longer obeyed her. When I looked into Lord Nightingale’s eyes, I saw the old, mad Theresa staring back at me. I knew what she was asking.”

“You cut her throat and turned her into Pharmakon? She was a thousand. She deserved better.”

“I didn’t cut her throat. I kissed her. That’s what always happens when we touch someone filled with carbon. I could have kissed her with my mask on, but she wanted honesty. She wanted rest.”

“You stole her leukocytes.”

“Tessa, there is no such thing as Pharmakon. What I gave to the ghost was a mixture of phencyclidine and embalming fluid. It makes vampires hallucinate and maximizes their anger response. They are not magical or invulnerable. They are hungry and confused.”

“Modred wouldn’t do that to his people.”

“Modred wants to be Magnate. He used to be a knight. Obviously he is tired of taking orders from an undergraduate.”

“So—” I feel like my brain is going to explode. “This isn’t a takeover. You’re just going to stand by and let the vampires tear each other apart.”

“Ideally, they were supposed to go after the necromancers, but they fled at the first sign of trouble. Now they will have to work things out among themselves, which usually requires a slicker if you happen to be watching.”

“I don’t get it. Why would you create all of this, let it run for a thousand years, and then just watch it burn?”

“You do not get it, as you say, because you are in it. We are outside. We have a bigger picture to consider. By the eleventh century, vampires and death-dealers were annihilating the human population. The animals and the old demons knew that something needed to be done. So an agreement was made. Those who practiced necromancy were given Trinovantum. This allowed humans with other magical aptitudes to safely emerge, and they were encouraged to form a collective. They called it
core
,
after ‘heart,’ but eventually, like all things, it became an acronym.”

“CORE.”

“Regulation enterprise.” I detect a note of dark humor in his voice. “Our first lesson to them was that magic could not be controlled, only seduced. But humans like to form committees, and committees like to regulate. Before contact, the first peoples that we dealt with in this country were respectful of this knowledge. The foreigners from Europe were not. Their committees tended to involve bonfires. But free will is tricky that way, and magic is a louse that hates to discriminate. We had to give them all a chance.”

“And now—what—you’re going to dismantle an ancient culture of workers, artists, and scholars because they made bad decisions? You’re going to judge us for our mistakes when all you did was sit on a faraway star and watch?”

“I was never that far away. But don’t you think a thousand years is a generous stretch of time? The problem is that you spent the first six hundred of those years burning witches, and the remaining centuries pondering your own genes while magic waited for you to do something.”

“You’re telling me that none of the cores in the world have impressed you? Not even the one in Stockholm?”

“It has all been micromanagement. We changed the nature of evolution for you. Vampires were hunting you. Humans were misusing necromancy, disturbing the dead.
Magic was killing you, because you were weak and did not respect it. The cores were an experiment. They have all failed, but none so spectacularly as yours, I think.”

“You’re not seeing any of the good things. There are brave materia-wielders and agents, people who make magic look like poetry. I still believe in the oath that I took.”

“Have you never enlisted materia for selfish means? Have you never harmed a normate, never revealed yourself? Have you always been a bulwark against the suffering of others?”

“I’m not perfect.”

“Of course not. Prisms are perfect. You have to be flawed, but these flaws are not what disappoint us. The real issue is that people with magic have proven themselves to be just as selfish and destructive as people untouched by it. The cores of the world were designed not only as schools, but as courts. Your task has always been to investigate death by magic. But you seem to cause as many deaths as you solve.”

“Our numbers are a lot better than that.”

“If they were, we would not be having this conversation.”

“Okay. You’re pissing me off now.” I try to look for some person who’s talking, but the room is dark and I’m alone. Ru and Lucian are still out. All I can do is pretend that he’s in front of me. “The last few days have been a case in point. The lab wasted a lot of energy on investigating
the death of Lord Nightingale. You couldn’t have just told us that it was a suicide?”

“We don’t have time to report the obvious to you.”

“The whole time, I suppose we were never really investigating anything. We were the ones under investigation. A queen and an old bird died, and in reality, it had nothing at all to do with us.”

“That is what solipsism gets you.”

I raise my athame. It illuminates the room, but I’m still talking to nothing. At least I could see Arcadia.

“Why are you here?” I ask again.

“To gather data. Things are obviously winding down here, and a report will need to be made. This isn’t the only world where materia exists. You’ve seen glimpses of a few, but believe me when I say that they are uncountable. Magic is everywhere, Tessa. People need to learn how to treat it.”