The Mirrored City (45 page)

“Impossible,” Nasara gasped as the blood poured from her mouth.

Jessa looked at the blood on her hand. “Perhaps these stones aren’t as powerful as we’ve been led to believe.”

Jessa stood and walked over to Nasara, grabbing the stone from her hand. Looking her aunt in her eyes, Jessa brought the stone to Nasara’s neck. The older woman said nothing, but her eyes burned with impotent fury.

Jessa slid the edge of the Thunderstone across Nasara’s skin, drawing blood.

The old woman’s body convulsed for the briefest of moments as it dissolved into briny seawater. All that remained of Nasara was a wet silk dress. Jessa gasped, dropping the stone in surprise as she stepped away.

Her own wound ached.
Why didn’t the Thunderstone kill me?
Was Nasara lying, or is there something more to it?

The door to the chamber opened, and Nerrax strode in next to Pisclatet. Nerrax looked briefly at the pool that was his mother’s body and then addressed Jessa. “Are you all right, Tempest? Shall I call for the blood mages?”

Jessa winced. “Please do.”

“Fishman,” Nerrax commanded, “fetch a blood priest. Anyone should do—the wound doesn’t look that serious.”

“Pisclatet shall fetch the most beautiful bandages in all of Thelassus!” Pisclatet scurried off into the Palace, probably to disappear for several hours to choose the appropriate colored silk.

“You knew who I was,” she said.

“It would be hard not to. You seemed a bit slow to take my hint,” he replied.

“Why?”

He grinned roguishly. “You killed your mother… and mine. What child of an insane Stormlord doesn’t pray for
that
?”

T
HIRTY-
N
INE

Reflections

M
ADDOX

Daniel,

I don’t know if you’ll ever get this. Hell, I don’t know if I’ll ever finish it. The eggheads say it will be millions of years before it gets home, if it ever does. They think we’re located somewhere called RCS2319 and have pinpointed a section of the sky where we can beam a message.

They say there are other initiatives beyond the portal, ones that would put people’s minds inside computers. In an infinite universe, everything possible must exist. I’m really starting to believe that.

We’ve found so many amazing things here. We’ve made contact with beings unlike anything science can explain. I don’t know if they’re aliens or angels… we just call them Guides. We’re performing miracles every day. People hope that one day they’ll teach us how to come home. Maybe they’re there among you now, helping heal Earth like they’re helping us transform this planet into a home.

I don’t know what happened or why we lost contact. I have to hold onto the idea that there was a reason I couldn’t be there to teach you to drive or shoot a gun or any of that. You’ll be an older man than I am if and when you read this, and I’ll most likely be dead. I guess I’d want you to know that I’ve had an interesting life out here.

I love you,

Dad

—
ENCODED MESSAGE, CURRENTLY IN TRANSIT

MADDOX STEPPED INTO
the storefront of his dad’s alchemy shop, Badlands’ Philters. It was supposed to say Baeland’s but the sign maker couldn’t read his father’s writing, and Dad was too cheap to have it fixed.

The front of the house consisted of a small laboratory with cluttered shelves for reagents and rows upon rows of bottles. Most of the interesting-looking ones were colored water, stacked in front of the windows to give a stained glass effect as the morning sun poured in.

A flask of foul-smelling blue liquid bubbled over a burner, filling the room with the cloying aroma of sweetgrass. It was the smell of his childhood.

“I’ll be damned,” a voice called from the back of the shop. Hubert Baeland emerged from the back. He was disheveled, bearded, and balding with his blue alchemist robes open to reveal his round hairy belly. “If it ain’t my faggot son. How you doing, Junior?”

“Fuck,” Maddox said, for lack of a better expression.

The Dreaming regularly served up some twisted shit during his period of narcotic exploration—but it had never been deliberately cruel. The man who had beaten and berated him stood there in the flesh, reeking of chemicals and alcohol.

“Fuck,” Hubert said, “is right. I thought you were too good to come down to Beaker Street with your fancy seals. You still scared of your old man, Junior?”

“I go by Maddox now… Hubert,” Maddox said. He didn’t know why he bothered answering. His father was dead, and this was obviously some personal hell constructed by the Harrower.

“You came out of my dick, so I’ll call you what I please.” Hubert pointed to the bubbling flask. “Now help me with the fucking distillation. You still know how to do that, right? Or did you forget?”

“Unlike you, I’m actually good at my craft,” Maddox spat.

“Oh yeah—the great ‘Archwizard’ Maddox. Big wizard you, with your two fucking seals, going up against a Harrower. I’ll let you in on a secret—”

“I’m not just a wizard; I’m an Architect.”

Hubert sniffed the potion. “Which means exactly shit. You have some vague power you can’t even begin to use. It’s like a priest with a twelve-inch cock. I’ll tell you what you are: you’re a Baeland. My dad was a piece of shit, and his dad was a piece of shit. You’re a foulmouthed drunken fuckup who likes it up the ass. You may be the biggest piece of shit our family ever crapped out.”

Maddox clenched his fists. “And to think when I heard you had died I was a little bit conflicted about it.”

“Yeah,” his dad grumbled to himself, “I’m dead because of you, you little piss stain. You could have stopped Riley. You lived with the asshole for fuck’s sake. That ‘brilliant mind’ of yours didn’t do shit for you, did it?”

“I don’t have to listen to this,” Maddox said. “You tried to fucking drown me in the river.”

“Discipline.” Hubert removed the potion from the burner and swirled it. “You were an ornery son of a bitch.”

“What did I do, Hubert?”

He paused and shrugged. “I’m sure I had a good reason.”

“You were shitfaced?”

“You killed the woman I loved when you came out of your mother’s belly. Vera was the only person who ever made me reconsider this shitty miserable life. And what did I get in exchange for her? I got you, a crying little faggot who never knew when to shut up. You were a disappointment from the start, and if I could go back, I’d make sure she never had that baby.” Hubert smiled and sniffed the blue potion again. The color was slowly deepening to purple.

Maddox wiped the corner of his eye. “Would have saved us both a lot of trouble.”

“What’s done is done.” Hubert scratched his beard. “Even in the fucking afterlife I get you instead of her. Hells, maybe it’s what I deserve. Never put much faith in answering for my sins, you know? At least the shop is well stocked.”

“You didn’t deserve me, you crapulent failure!” Maddox shouted. “You didn’t then, and you don’t now. This nightmare is
my
punishment, not yours. I would love to see my mother, hells I’d even take
Jessa’s mother
over you, and that woman was the very definition of evil. You aren’t just a terrible person, you’re terrible at
being
a person.”

Hubert roared and charged at Maddox. Maddox raised his hands and hurled the full force of his seal—but nothing happened. His eyes registered panic for a second before his father grabbed Maddox’s hair and dragged him to the support beam next to the stairs.

CRACK.

It was like he was five years old again. Powerless. Sobbing. Hurting. He slid to the floor and curled into a ball. He could feel blood pouring down the side of his face.

“You think you can face a Harrower with your little tattoo, Junior? Your hells are just starting.”

Maddox felt rage well up within him. He jumped to his feet and readied himself to fight back, placing one foot behind him to give his punch momentum. He had picked up a little bit of hand-to-hand muscle memory from Sword.

Hubert laughed.

Maddox hit his father in his hairy stomach, knocking him back. The potion bottle slipped from his hand and shattered on the floor.

“Now look what you did!” Hubert glared at Maddox and backhanded him across the face, knocking him to the floor. He felt his father’s smelly foot press down on his cheek. Maddox struggled to stand, but the man shifted more and more weight until Maddox’s head throbbed with pain.

“You’re never going to beat me, Junior.”

“What do you want?” Maddox gritted his teeth.

“Respect in my own house,” Hubert said. “You can start by cleaning up that mess and distilling another bottle. When you’re done with that, I’ll have other chores. It’s either that or beatings. Understand?”

Tears were mixing with blood on Maddox’s face. He sniffled. “Yes. I understand.”
Fuck the Harrower. I can’t do this, anything but this. But what choice do I have?

Hubert removed his foot. “And clean those faggot tears off my floor. Well? Hurry the fuck up. You think I’m pissed now—wait till you see what happens if I don’t take my potion.”

Maddox picked himself off the floor and brushed the blood off of his face. He said the words he thought he would never say: “I–I…forgive you.”

Hubert’s eyes went wide. “The fuck?”

“You’re here because I carry a part of you with me. The Harrower didn’t hand pick you to test me—I did. Look, when I was young, you hurt me and that was wrong. But I got away from you and grew up. And without you there to beat me up, I started doing it to myself. That’s why I wanted everyone to respect me.

“I used to have so many daydreams about coming back here, showing how successful I was, yelling at you, beating you up—even killing you. I’m not saying I don’t have a right to be angry or want revenge. I do. But as long as I hold onto that I will always carry a part of you with me. And I don’t want that. I don’t want anything to do with you.”

Hubert said nothing. Maddox stared without expression, not moving. Every time he fought his father, he only grew stronger.

“I’m letting you go, Hubert.”

The old man stood motionless, like a statue.

Maddox waved his hand, and the door to the shop opened.

It wasn’t the revenge he wanted. The man was already dead, anyway. But letting go and walking away felt… good.

The red room twenty-six of the Palace of Keys looked slightly different than Maddox remembered, with different marital aids mounted on wall hooks. Tied to the bed with abraevium chains was a humanoid mass of Protean worms, screeching and straining against the bonds. A rude approximation of a face showed sunken pits where the eyes and mouth were. It was the place they had tried to convert him.

“Lyta?” Maddox asked, plugging his ears against the horrid wail.

The noise stopped, mercifully. Her head nodded slowly.

“Fuck,” he said. “This is
your
nightmare. I don’t know that much about you, but there is a way out of here. We just have to figure it out.” He tried to unfasten the manacles but found no mechanism, and predictably, his seal magic didn’t work.

Maddox ran his hands through his hair. “Is this where you were… made into that?”

She nodded.

“Okay. Well, I don’t think you’re going to have much luck breaking through those chains.”

She flexed her arms and strained against her bonds. As she did, the worms became tighter and longer, coming closer to her human shape. The abraevium filaments attached to the bonds stretched but did not give. That stuff was indestructible. She relaxed back into a looser mass of writhing parts.

“Wait a minute.” Maddox paused. “You’re all worm right now. All you need to do is that thing Quillian did and flow out of your body.”

She shook her head violently.

“Is it because you
can’t
or because you don’t want to?”

She nodded.

“Poor phrasing. Have you tried doing that?”

She looked down, shaking her head.

“I get it. You think you’re disgusting, or you don’t want to be what you are. You’ve probably had to hide it all your life. I can sort of relate to that. But if you don’t wriggle free, you’re going to be stuck here forever.”