The Artifact of Foex (35 page)

If that’s true, I was, um, sacrificed in
female form, too.
Chet blinked, his world tilting in a way
that had nothing to do with the apartment around him.

This was crazy.

His brain churned on regardless. Being a
looper would explain his obsession with the past. Chet blinked. He
could see his bookcases in his mind’s eye, the titles laid out
before him. More than half of his collection had been penned by
Magicians. He’d never noticed the sheer numbers before, the oddly
high percentage.

Then there was the Raptus.

“
It should not have called upon any
but god affiliates,” Journey had said in the prostitute’s van.“I
cannot believe that the makers of this object would wish to endow
it upon random, unaffiliated people.
”

Chet was unaffiliated now, but if he were a
looping soul, then the past had its fingerprints all over him.
Perhaps... he was reaching now, but perhaps the Raptus had
recognized him as a Magician, one of its correct guardians. Maybe
the Raptus even
knew
him. Personally. The idea was
delightful and frightening beyond belief. Did Chet know the
Raptus?

Chet closed his eyes. He obsessively recalled
every detail of his dream. The smells, the sounds. The other man
had talked about shaping a ninth prong. The Raptus had twelve
spikes—like the twelve fingers of a god—only it was shaped like a
doedicu’s tail. The spikes on a doedicu’s tail, he recalled
suddenly, were often translated as
prongs
in the ancient
tongue of Door. Maybe he and the other man had been in the process
of creating the Raptus? It seemed too big a stretch, yet Chet had
been traveling with the Raptus for a week. Had his subconscious
mind had chosen that memory on purpose?

Who had that other man been anyway? The other
Magician, rather. Chet thought he’d seemed familiar...

He sat up in bed, stunned.

The other man seemed familiar because he
was
familiar. It was Fenimore LaDaven. Only not Fenimore:
he’d had a different face and body, a different name. Like Chet. It
was obvious... yet not so.

Chet settled down again, frowning. There was
a definitive lack of solid evidence, for one thing. How could he
prove it? Reincarnation had no physical proof to draw on. Yet
beneath Fenimore’s mannerisms was the same energy. He was the same
person
as the Magician in Chet’s drea—no, his memory.

Fenimore had been a Magician, too. That
explained Fenimore’s role in the binding, at least. The Raptus may
have recognized him, too.

If it were true, did Fenimore
know?
Chet nibbled his lip, thinking about Fenimore’s words, his
silences. He had the same silences as Knife only laid out in a
different pattern. Fenimore had tried to grab the Raptus back at
the dig site. He’d acted as if he’d owned it. Hadn’t Fenimore said
something about Foex in the barn? About how Foex prevented
them
from being women? It made sense, given Aureate’s
story.

For the sake of argument, I'd say he
knows
.

If that was true, it followed that Fenimore
had long-term plans for the Raptus. A magical relic that could
control humanity... Chet could see Fenimore enjoying that kind of
power.

How long had those plans been laid? It was a
good bet that back in 7305, Fenimore had been seeking the Raptus
for himself, not his prince. Chet considered Knife’s version of the
story. It still felt wrong, but it was the only information he had,
far more complete than Fen’s account in the ambulance. Fenimore and
Knife had split up in Eich Che, taking different paths. Chet
decided that it wasn’t a coincidence that Fenimore had found the
Raptus and Knife hadn’t.

Pantheon, Fen wanted the Raptus so badly. The
physical evidence said that Fenimore had dove into lucid mud—into
the unknown future—holding it in his hands. He’d held on so hard
that the graduate students had had to tie a rope to his legs to
pull him from the dust.

Fenimore has the Raptus even now, this
very moment. He also has Journey and Knife,
Chet thought
wildly.

Wait. Something wasn’t quite adding up. It
was like looking down at a half-finished jigsaw puzzle to try and
see the picture without the missing pieces.
Did
Fenimore
have Journey and Knife? “I don’t know why Journey is waiting,”
Fenimore had said on the train. She was holding back both her blood
and verse—for a reason? Chet knew Journey and Knife were currently
unaware of Fenimore’s heightened control of the Raptus. Abyss, he'd
been there. But had they always been ignorant of his actions and
intentions?

No.

Oh, Pantheon, it all added up. Knife had been
keeping an eye on Fenimore since day one. Chet remembered Journey
whispering in Clementina’s house about how “he” was Knife’s meat.
It was so simple. Journey had called Knife in not just because of
the Raptus—she clearly hadn't known the Shadow Dancers were keeping
an eye on things until she reached the site—but because of
Fenimore. Knife had been called in to handle a very old problem
indeed: the double-faced courtier who had craved the Raptus beyond
rational thought and reason.

But things hadn’t gone according to plan, had
they? After becoming bound by the cords, Knife had switched up her
game. She’d made noises about destroying the Raptus, sure, but
she’d also offered the incentive of unlocking it. Luring Fen
along.

To what? Who was trapping whom?

Did Knife and Journey know Fen was a
reincarnating Magician, too? Um. Chet found himself going cross
eyed at the possibility. The Flame had treated Fenimore with a
careful respect as they’d watched him, nothing more. It was likely
Knife considered Fenimore a greedy, entitled, immoral loose cannon,
exactly the way she’d described him earlier. The Flame were not
Syche affiliates, and they could not read minds. The only reason
Chet suspected Fenimore was because of his dream.

In the end, it didn’t matter what Journey and
Knife’s intentions had been. Fenimore had sat on that dock with two
weeping Flame and had somehow gotten the upper hand on them using
the Raptus. Maybe. The last two verses, the last drops of blood,
were the only things locking the Raptus. They were headed for
Allistair at this minute to retrieve Knife’s verse.

Shit, shit, shit
. He had to get
there. He had to get there
now
.

Chet threw his feet over the edge of the bed
tried to stand up, immediately collapsing. He was weak, his body
wrung out. It wasn’t just his body—Chet’s head swam.
One step
at a time,
he thought, breathing deep. Just like the
motorboat. Clothing was upstairs. He stood again, bracing himself
against the wall and walked slowly on shaky feet to the staircase.
It was such a modern apartment that the stairs appeared to float in
the air, connected underneath somehow. There was no railing. Chet
eyed the stairs, nauseated and nervous. What if he lost his
balance?

He turned around and sat on a riser, then
lifted himself to the next stair backwards. Scooting up the steps
like a child.

A child... he remembered the face of the
young girl he’d slaughtered like an animal. He’d told Fenimore that
he was tired of killing children. Chet swallowed nausea. Magicians
had practiced blood magic for millennia; it was what they were
notorious for.

I murdered children,
he thought.
Lots and lots of children. Little girls, mostly.

Chet crawled back down the stairs as fast as
he could. He could see a bedpan on the floor beside the bed. His
whole world had narrowed to that single goal. Reaching it, he
vomited his guts out. Then he sank, head resting on the
floorboards, moaning.

If only Rory could see me now,
he
thought. He’d been a god affiliate after all. A murderous, horrific
god affiliate. What would she say if she knew? Rory would probably
never accept him with good reason.

There was so much blood on his hands... no,
wait.
Was
there blood on his hands? Chet had never hurt
anyone in his life. He was completely innocent, just a graduate
student with a rich family.
That’s right.
Except he didn’t
believe it. The Raptus had called him out, hadn’t it? The Flame,
while discrete with their circular reasoning, had done the same.
How could anyone live with this kind of legacy? Chet had wallowed
in history, but history, it seemed, was full of nasty
surprises.

I will be paying for this for the rest of
my life,
Chet thought grimly. What could possibly balance his
terrible deeds? Growing up, he’d been surrounded by family members
who either enjoyed breaking the law for the purpose of making
money, or who’d despised this mindset and turned to a higher
calling. His sisters had become Nuns for more than just legal and
financial independence from their father’s dealings. Chet, too, had
always identified with a higher calling, as his finely honed
conscience wouldn’t have had it any other way.

So he wasn’t a normal guy, the same guy he’d
always been. Chet was worse. A murderer of children, and another
Magician was about to unlock a powerful magical tool to help him
do—what? Kill more people, Chet was afraid.

He was too sick and weak—with both remorse
and illness—to do much about it.

It took over an hour, but Chet got dressed,
visited the bathroom and descended the stairs to the ground level.
How was he going to get to the train station? He had no money on
him. How was he to buy a ticket?

The front door opened and Quor strode
through. She was wearing a knit cap in proxy of a wig. She still
wore her scrubs and cradled paper grocery bags, a newspaper tucked
under her arm. “Abyss, what are you doing?”

“Journey and Knife are in terrible danger.
I’ve got to...”

“You’re going back to bed,” she said firmly,
putting the bags down on a counter. “Come on, I’ll help you
upstairs.”

“You don’t understand.” To his horror, he
started weeping
again
. Fenimore was right, he was a pansy.
Chet swiped his eyes angrily, sniffing.

Instead of forcing him up the stairs, she
pulled out a chair and gestured him into it. “Tell me what you
think is going on while I put away groceries, okay? I want the
whole story. Front to back.”

Chet was incredibly grateful for the chair.
The story had started at the lucid mud dig site when Professor
Tibbets had introduced him to Journey. So much had happened since
then. Trying not to feel daunted by his own experiences, Chet
cleared his throat and began. Doyen Quor was an appreciative
audience. She scowled at the discovery of Tibbet’s body and smiled
wryly at his dunking in the doedicu lake. He had a feeling she
already had most of the facts; it was his opinions and
understanding she was looking for. Though he attempted to conceal
the sex stuff, he had a feeling Quor saw right past him.

“You know," she said, “you really ought to go
get tested.”

“Tested?”

“For VDs. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve
caught something. For the sake of any potential partner you might
have—apart from Flame—go see a doctor pronto. Okay, Chet?”

“Yeah. Fine.” His face was hot enough to melt
tar, and she looked away as if preserving his privacy. It helped
him continue with his tale, anyway.

He got to the part where Aureate had left to
take a piss... and halted. He literally could not continue. It
wasn’t a Raptus thing—the fog seemed to be fading for some
reason—but he couldn’t speak.

Quor put a gentle hand on his shoulder.
“Knife told me you tried to rescue her.”

“Yes.” He closed his eyes. “I can still
feel... oh, Pantheon.”

“Aureate and I have rarely gotten along, but
I’m sorry that she’s dead. Such a waste of a good body. She was
pushed, wasn’t she?”

“I think... I think I know who did it, too.
Maybe.”

Quor lifted an eyebrow. “Pray continue.”

He found to his relief that he could explain
what had happened on the train. Fenimore’s words and actions were
just as gut wrenching after the fact. The mind-control fog seemed
irrelevant now. Why was the Raptus’s power over him reduced and
diluted? Chet didn’t know, but he guessed it had something to do
with distance. He could still feel the Raptus—and the others
through the cords—though the connection was quite stretchy. He
certainly wasn’t in physical pain. Through the connection, he could
tell the Raptus was several hundred miles away, and the distance
was growing greater with each passing minute.

No one in the old days had been able to
travel seventy miles an hour as people did on modern trains. Chet
and the others had started this trip wondering what effect modern
technology would have on the Raptus. It seemed this was one of
them.

Chet finished his story, saying, “So you see,
Journey and Knife are all that remains between Fenimore and the
unlocked Raptus. This is just a theory, but I believe Fenimore was
a Magician, too.” He explained his dream in more detail.

“I... suppose that might be possible. LaDaven
seemed a little jittery while he was here. Didn’t say much.”

Fenimore had hardly been speaking at all,
Chet realized with a start. For a guy with such high energy, he’d
been surprisingly quiet. Patient. “I know I need another day in
bed, but I don’t want more people to die for the Raptus. Especially
not my friends.”

“Mmm, but Knife knows all this, too. This is
Knife’s forte.”

“Yeah, I figured out that Knife was called in
to look after Fenimore. Though I wonder why Knife didn’t just kill
him outright.” Chet shot her a covert look.

Quor blinked. “You look awfully innocent,
Chet, but you aren’t, are you?”

“I used to be. Last week, say.”

“Huh. Knife likes to get the lay of the land
before acting, and the Raptus caught you all long before she was
done with her assessment. None of us know how to deal with that.
Hopefully the Shadow Dancers will come through.”