Hi, everyone! Thanks for stopping by to read this week's update! This is the first draft, so expect grammatical errors, dropped plot lines, continuity issues, shifting placenames, and the occasional piece of hackneyed dialogue. It happens, it's mostly unpolished. Also, expect adult situations and language.
If you're alright with that stuff and find you are actually enjoying the story, please consider sharing it with friends.
Thanks!
-S
PS So not to cause confusion, I've decided to change the name of the constructs working for the Duke's Own to Watchworkers.
Aleph listened to the conversation going on in the cell across from hers with half an ear, her mind concentrating on things happening far beyond the walls of her cell.
“People named Nigel have no friends,” Dimitri declared. “It is known.”
“But…” Sam tried to break in.
“Ah!” Dimitri held up a silencing hand. “It is known.”
It had been like this since they arrived. They’d been sitting for an hour, and if their thinly padded bench was anything like hers, their asses were by now completely numb. If time flew, the part of it that was looking after them had missed its connector and was sitting at an empty boarding gate looking confused.
“I mean look at Nigel Longbottom.” Dimitri continued.
“I think you mean Neville. Neville Longbottom.”
“I’m pretty sure it was Nigel. He had no friends.”
“Neville had friends.”
“Nigel, and no he didn’t.”
“Harry and Ron…”
“Barely tolerated him.” Dimitri broke in. “As soon as he got in their way, wham! Petrificus totalis.”
Dimitri settled back against the wall and continued. “Nigel’s whole relationship with his friends,” he said making air quotes around the word, “was based on sympathy.‘Ooh look at me, my parents were tortured, I’m sooo sad.’” He said, making little waving motions with his wrists.
“Nigels don’t have friends, they just have people that feel sorry for them. If you ever hear of a Nigel getting laid, you can be pretty sure it’s a mercy fuck. Nigels are kings of the mercy fuck.” he added darkly.
Sam looked at him for a long beat. “Why?” It didn’t sound like it was a question about the conversation so much as it was one about Dimitri.
Dimitri turned an incredulous look on him. “Because it is known. Duh. How else do you explain that asshole we met at the front gate.”
“But his name is Nigel,” Sam said, sounding lost.
“Exactly my point.”
“Guys, I know you’re bored and this is just your way of coping, but could you both please shut up for just two minutes? I’m trying to concentrate.”
“On what?” Dimitri asked.
Aleph eyed him darkly.
The flock boiled over the Wandering Market, thirty strong. None of them called out to each other, the only sound was the sound of wind on hard feathers. They beat high into the dark sky until the lights of the market were pinpricks on a glowing grid. They were the fastest, the strongest, the canniest of those remaining; chosen of their goddess, black of wing and sharp of beak. They had left their mates, their young, their families, to join the mob. All across the city their gates had been blocked or guarded. No souls arrived and none of The People left to carry them back. Three attempts had already been made on smaller gateways, this would be the last.
“On getting a message through to Vancouver,” Aleph replied.
“Like, right now?”
“Yes, right now.”
The mob broke southwest past the market and the massive buildings the flightless had built in a sad imitation of flight. All they had accomplished for their efforts was to give The People safe places to roost.
“Oh. Is this some kind of crow thing?” Dimitri asked.
Sam elbowed him and gave him a look.
“What? I’m just asking.”
“She asked you to shut up.”
“Yes,” Aleph said between clenched teeth. “This is a crow thing.”
In the space of a hundred wingbeats, they were over the square that spanned the worlds. The one the flightless used to come and go, as though it was the only way in and out. Below them, masses of the flightless were crowded together, slowly shuffling to the edges of the square while more filed through the stone gates, adding to their number.
On a regular day, they would be able to come and go as they pleased, but the flightless had stopped them, battered them out of the air and crushed them as they tried to leave. Even those arriving with new souls had suffered.
Their goddess had called though, and for their love of Her, they would answer. The mob began a steep spiralling descent toward the stone gate that led back to the cold city by the ocean. They were black feathers against the ever-blackened sky.
“How can you do that? These cells are covered in the same sigils as these bracelets,” Dimitri said pointing at the faint outline of sigils that were only barely visible under the institutional beige paint on the bars. “This is a magical Faraday Cage,” he said, giving the bars a thump with the heel of his palm. “Nothing in, nothing out.”
“Yes, but that only works on mortal magic, Sorcery, Alchemy, and the rest. These weren’t built to hold gods. We work differently.”
“Then why aren’t you out there kicking ass and taking names?”
“It would be pointless. Just because I’m a goddess doesn’t mean I’m all powerful,” she grated. “I could rip these bars apart like paper, but it would be a complete waste of energy.”
Dimitri looked confused.
“I love them to bits,” she said, trying to explain in a way that Dimitri could understand, “but a few hundred thousand crows, no matter how awesome, don’t leave me with a lot of divine gas in the tank.”
“Oh.”
“And besides, it’s not allowed,” she added distractedly.
“What?”
Aleph sighed. “Haven’t you ever wondered why the gods aren’t just tearing things up all around the Aether? We could you know.”
“Not really.”
“I have,” said Sam. They don’t even really answer prayers like they used to.
“Yup, we stopped when we nearly unmade the whole multiverse.”
“I never heard that,” said Dimitri.
“Not surprising, the worlds where it happened mostly aren’t there anymore.”
“Oh.”
“Since then, there are a few rules we follow. One of them is that we don't directly interfere with mortals.”
“So it’s kind of like a divine Prime Directive,” said Sam.
“A what?”
“Don’t worry about him. He switches to geek sometimes when he gets excited,” said Dimitri.
“So, if that’s true, how come you’re working for Penhold? Isn’t that against the rules?” asked Dimitri.
“As long as I don’t do anything more for him what any other mortal can, I’m good.”
“So that’s why you didn’t turn Nigel into a pile of dog shit on the spot?”
“Exactly. And it’s why I don’t just walk out of here now.”
“Are we good for right now? I need to look after some stuff.” She closed her eyes in the hopes that it would make the two less likely to disturb her. This was going to get tricky.
Three times around the gate, three uninterrupted circuits and they would be through to deliver the message. Fast as shadows cast by a candle on a windy night, they dropped toward the gate. Whether it was the wind from their passage that gave them away or some unseen alchemy, faces turned up at them when they were still high above the gate. In moments they levelled off and beat their wings furiously, curling around the gate in a funnel. All of their cunning went into avoiding the nets, the grasping hands, and the blasts of buckshot that came up to meet them.
The first of them was swatted from the air, another disappeared in an explosion of feathers and blood as lead pellets tore through her. Still, they spun and whirled, doing all they could to complete the three orbits of the stone gate.
By the time they had completed the first full circle there were only seventeen left able to fly, by the second time around there were six. The ragged remainder flew on. In moments it was finished. Black feathers drifted and settled to the cobbled earth.
In her cell, Aleph shuddered and drew her knees up to her chest. Her children died every day from raccoons, cars, disease, it was to be expected. Grief was the currency the living paid to remain behind. It was a transaction Aleph knew to her bones, she was more intimately familiar with death than nearly any other being in the Aether. To lose so many so quickly though, felt like there was only a cold hollow in her chest where her heart used to be.
“Well? Did you get through?” Dimitri asked.
Aleph had to unclench her hands to answer. “I don’t know. Once they’re through the gate I can’t feel them anymore, but I lost so many…” She took a deep steadying breath. “We can’t count on it. Whatever we do from here on out, we’re on our own.”
“Alright,” said Dimitri, clapping his hands together and getting to his feet. “So what do we do?”
“We wait.”
“We wait?!”
Aleph nodded.
“For what? What do we wait for?”
“For who. Either Nigel realizes that I’m too dangerous to keep here and takes steps, or…” Aleph cocked her head as though listening to something. Sam listened, but couldn’t hear a thing but the hum of the lights.
“Or what?
“Or one of my friends comes through for me.”
At the far end of the room there came the sound of a key in the heavy lock and the click of the door opening followed by heavy footsteps.
Aleph knew those footsteps, but she still rose and joined Dimitri and Sam who were peering out the bars of their own cell to see down the corridor. A watchworker made his way toward them, but this time it wasn’t Miranda. This construct had wider shoulders with a narrow waist and had the rank insignia of a silver crown surrounded in nightshade leaves on his sleeves. It was Prospero.
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