All the Birds in the Sky (34 page)

Percival was a “madrigal groupie,” who followed the groups around using a Caddy app and hung on every quaver. “My biggest fear about the apocalypse isn’t being eaten by cannibals—it’s the fact that in every other postapocalyptic movie you see someone with an acoustic guitar by the campfire,” said Percival, who had pale meaty hands with calluses on the sides of the fingers. “I can’t stand acoustic guitar music. I’d rather listen to dubthrash.”

“There’s no apocalypse,” Reginald snorted. “There’s just … a period of adjustment. People are being drama queens.” But even as he spoke, he had a vivid image of Patricia, looming over his bed at four in the morning, with an urgency in her hoarse voice that was indistinguishable from fear. Again, he wondered:
The front of what?

*   *   *

EVERY STONE, EVERY
leaf of ivy, every iridescent windowpane at Eltisley Hall rejected Diantha’s presence. The grass at the center of the Hex bristled at her. The chunky marble columns of the Greater Building drew themselves up, like magistrates taking umbrage. The narrow gates of the Lesser Building seemed to squint, to deny her entrance. The Chapel clenched granite and stained-glass fists, their knuckles spiked with gargoyles. Across the Hex, the big white slab of the Residential Wing turned opaque with mist. All six sides of the Hex puffed with hostility. Healers had built this place, centuries ago, and nobody does scorn like a pure Healer. Diantha hadn’t come back to Eltisley since she’d been allowed to graduate without distinction, and this was worse than she’d dreaded.

She almost turned and ran, but she would only have gotten lost in the Brambles and possibly eaten by something before she could have reached any kind of road. So instead, she made herself walk up the sharp steps to the Greater Building, where they were waiting for her in Formal Hall. She drew her thin black gown, with its yellow trim and ermine collar, tighter around herself against the sudden chill. Why had they demanded her presence when she was finally starting to build a life without magic?

Diantha found an empty seat in Formal Hall, in the back corner, as far as possible from High Table. Portraits of dead witches scowled from the dark walls, and chandeliers shuddered overhead. They were serving some kind of fish course, but the fish and the potatoes were the same mushy consistency. Someone tried to make small talk, but Diantha just kept her head down and pretended she was eating.

Just when Diantha thought the whole ordeal couldn’t get more miserable, she heard an inhuman chatter from the corridor outside, and the group burst in. A dozen of them, in their little suits and starchy dresses, singing madrigals. Fucking madrigals. Was there a more repulsive trend, in the entire universe? Trust hipsters to make even the collapse of civilization unbearably twee. These were the advertising jingles of the Renaissance, written by wife killers and creepy stalkers. Diantha wanted to scream, to drown them out with obscenities, to fling her fishtatoes at them.

Someone slipped an envelope onto the table, instructing Diantha to come to the Upper Common Room for after-dinner sherry.

The UCR was not the nest of luxury Diantha and the other students had always imagined. Just a mahogany box with seven leather armchairs and a crimson-and-jasmine carpet. The ceiling was a wooden grid, as were the walls. Everything tidy and regular, because this was Eltisley Hall.

Another hand reached for the sherry at the same time as Diantha, and she recognized the slim white wrist even before she looked up into the face of Patricia Delfine. Patricia still looked the same, like an eager baby. She hadn’t grown prematurely old the way Diantha had. Patricia smiled, she actually smiled, at Diantha.

The half-full sherry glass slipped from Diantha’s grasp as Patricia poured for her, almost ruining the immaculate carpet. Patricia helped steady Diantha’s hand. She resisted the urge to throw her drink in Patricia’s face. Instead, she looked at her own feet.

“It’s so weird to be back here, after so long,” Patricia said. “Feels like a lifetime since we left, but also like we were just here yesterday. Like a spell that makes us both younger and older. I am glad to see you again.”

No, Patricia really had changed—she moved like a Bodhisattva, or a Jedi, not the rambunctious klutz Diantha remembered. And behind her thin-lipped smile, she had some underground lake of sadness. Maybe sad to see what Diantha had become.

“I know why you’re here,” Diantha said to Patricia. “But I’m not sure why I am.”

“Why am I here?” Patricia took the daintiest sip, leaving a lava-lamp patina on the inside of her glass.

“You’re the prodigal daughter. They bring you back into the fold, and show that they can forgive.”

“You feel like you were exiled, but me, they let back in,” Patricia said. “The truth is, you exiled yourself.”

“You can choose to see it that way if it eases your mind.” Diantha turned away.

Patricia put her hand on Diantha’s forearm—just three fingertips—and it felt like the sharpest static charge. Diantha felt as though she’d tongued a dose of Ecstasy. Warm, at ease. This was not something the old Patricia could have done.

“
What are you?
” she stammered. Everybody in the room was staring. Patricia’s hand was long removed, but Diantha still wobbled.

“We don’t have much time, things are changing quickly,” Patricia said in Diantha’s ear with quiet clarity. “You’ve turned your guilt into resentment, because that seemed easier to face. You won’t move on until you turn it back into guilt, and then into forgiveness for yourself.”

The rational part of Diantha’s mind was saying this analysis seemed much too facile, too straightforward, but she found herself nodding and sniffling. Now everybody was definitely watching, though nobody else could hear what Patricia said.

“I can help,” Patricia said. “I want to help you, and not just because we need you to work with us. If I help you throw away the guilt that you’ve fashioned into armor that constricts your every movement, what will you do for me in return?”

Diantha came so close to saying she would do whatever Patricia wanted, anything at all. And then it hit her: She was being Trickstered. She’d been
this close
to becoming a slave to her former best friend. Diantha backed away, almost tipping over a teak side table full of drinks.

“Serious…” Diantha scrambled to remember the arrangement of facial muscles that constituted a normal expression. “Serious … seriously. What happened to you?”

“Honestly?” Patricia shrugged. “I had some great teachers, in San Francisco. But the main thing was, I fell in love with a man, and he built a doomsday machine.”

Patricia walked away. Diantha fell onto an armchair, landing on the arm instead of the seat. The worst of it was, she hadn’t escaped Patricia’s clutches at all. She would be ready to do whatever Patricia asked of her, soon enough. Probably the very next time she felt loneliness pile up. Maybe even later that same night.

*   *   *

THEODOLPHUS ROSE WAS
happy at last. His neck was affixed to the stone wall behind him by a wide steel collar that chafed his jaw and clavicle, and his hands and feet were embedded deep in that same wall, so his arms and legs cramped. Far above, he heard the sounds of Eltisley Hall: students processing and recessing, teachers gossiping over sherry, even a madrigal chorus. Besides the collar and stones, a dozen spells held Theodolphus. His captors brought him food and bathed him, and meanwhile he had the world’s most escape-proof prison to keep him entertained. This was far preferable to being a wooden tchotchke.

Plus, he had visitors! Like Patricia Delfine, who had discovered his cell a few days ago. Since then, she stopped by at least once a day to pay her respects, neither gloating nor scowling. She had grown into quite a terrifying woman, who moved like a knife thrower. The Nameless Assassin School would have given Patricia top marks for her soundless gait, the slight pronation of her left foot, the roll of her right shoulder, the lack of mercy in her sea-green eyes. She could end you, before you even saw her coming. Watching her close the heavy white door behind her, Theodolphus took a certain pride in his former student.

“Miss Delfine,” he said. She had brought some food for him. Fish and potatoes! Food of the gods. The warm starchy smell banished the usual rankness.

“Hello, Ice King,” she said. She always called him Ice King. He didn’t know what that meant.

“I’m so delighted that you could come and visit,” he said, just like always. “I wish you would let me help you.”

“How would you help me?” Patricia gave him a look that made it clear she had follicles that were deadlier than his entire arsenal.

“I told you already, about the vision I saw at the Assassin Shrine. It’s coming: the final war between science and magic. The destruction will be astounding. The world will be torn, torn to giblets.”

“Like Kawashima said, visions of the future are pretty much always total crap,” Patricia said. “Laurence and his people had a machine, we dealt with it. End of story.”

“Oh. I remember Laurence!” Theodolphus smiled. “I tried everything I knew to turn him against you, you know. I used all my guile. He still stood up for you. Bloody brat.” His pelvis made a sound like popcorn popping.

At that, Patricia’s calm wavered. “That’s not true,” she said. “He bailed on me. I remember. When I needed him most, he flaked. I could never rely on him when we were kids.”

Theodolphus attempted to shrug, but his shoulders were partway dislocated. “You believe what you want,” he said. “But I was there, and I saw the whole thing. Laurence suffered beatings because he would not disavow you. He spat the most awful insults at me. I remember well, because it was the beginning of how I ended up here.”

“The best thing about my life now is, I never have to listen to you again.” And now Patricia seemed a vulnerable child again—as if he’d somehow reached an exposed nerve, without even realizing. “I survived all your stupid mind games. I can survive whatever happens, from here on out. Goodbye, Ice King.” She put the plate of food on the wooden shelf in front of his face, then slammed the door, not even waiting for him to thank her for the fish and potatoes. They tasted amazing.

*   *   *

THE HENS LIVED
in a coop and a small yard that became slick with chicken shit no matter how often you shoveled. Their ringleader was a big clay-colored broody named Drake who puffed herself up like a poisonous fish whenever anyone came near, and tried to peck your eyes out for the crime of feeding her. The other hens scattered in Drake’s path and attacked anyone whom they judged Drake to have softened up first; you had to let these little fuckers know who was boss right up front or they would ride your ass forever.

Roberta found herself shielding her face with her forearms and shouting, “I’m warning you, I’ve killed a man!” at Drake and her crew. The hens were unimpressed, launching another attack on Roberta’s ankles, and she had to leap outside the ring before she got clobbered. She leaned over the fence, looking down into Drake’s dark little eyes glaring up at her like come-at-me-bitch
,
and Roberta had instant access to a catalogue of a few dozen ways to retaliate. Ranging from minor acts of sadism that would leave no mark to a deniable accident that would remove Drake from the pen forever. Roberta could picture them. Her hands were ready. She could teach this dumb bird, it would be easy.

A surge of nausea followed that thought, and Roberta had to sit down, in the mud, nose perilously close to the wire hexagons of the fence. Dry-heaving. Of course she was not going to hurt this chicken. That was crazy, right? She stared at Drake, who was still a ruddy bowling ball, and felt kinship with the little psycho. “Listen,” she told Drake. “I get where you’re coming from. I’ve been through some stuff, too. I just lost both parents, and I had a
lot
of unfinished business with them. I spent so long thinking I never wanted to speak to them again, and now that I never can, I’m realizing how wrong I was. I never even expected to outlive them; they were supposed to mourn me and feel all helpless, not the other way around. And I guess what I’m saying is: Can we be friends? I promise I won’t challenge your authority. I just want to be one of your lieutenants or something. Okay? For real.”

Drake craned her neck and unpuffed slightly. She gave Roberta a once-over, then seemed to nod slowly.

“Tell your sister,” the hen said, “she waited too long, and it’s too late.”

“What?” Roberta leapt to her feet, then tripped and fell on her ass again.

“You heard me,” Drake said. “Pass on the message. She said she needed more time to answer, we gave her more time. It’s a simple yes-or-no question, for fuck’s sake.”

“Uh.” This was it. Roberta was finally losing her mind. “Okay. I’ll, uh, tell her.”

“Good. Now give me my goddamn corn,” Drake said.

Drake never spoke to Roberta again—at least, not in English—but after that they really were sort of friends. Roberta learned how to read Drake’s moods and know when to give the alpha hen space. She knew when one of the other humans had pissed Drake off, and she would cuss him or her out on Drake’s behalf. At last, Roberta had found an authority figure she could please without hating herself.

She tried to get in touch with Patricia, but her little sister’s phone seemed permanently turned off and nobody knew where she’d gone.

A few weeks later, Roberta dreamed she was being chased by a giant metal statue, swinging a scythe whose blade was the size of a bus. She ran down a grassy hill, then lost her footing and plunged headfirst into the bushes. Roberta closed her eyes to scream, and when she reopened them, the statue was Patricia.

“Hey, Bert,” the giant steel Patricia said, loudspeaker-like. “Sorry to bust in on you. I got help from a friend of mine, who does dreamwalking. I’m going to be washing his car. Anyway. I wanted to make sure you were okay. I’m tying up all my loose ends.”

“Why would you do that?”

Big Patricia blinked, as though she didn’t understand the question.

“Loose ends are cool.” Roberta got upright and parted the bushes with both hands, craning her neck to look up at her skyscraper sister. “Loose ends mean that you’re still living your life. The person who dies with the most loose ends wins.”