The news they received upon returning to Maidenkeep remained bleak. There were no changes to Alex’s condition, and the firebird was the same. Mainstream media was finally starting to talk about the attack but was leaning hard on the worst possible take from it.
“Are they actually saying we deserved to be invaded?” Tita Baby asked in disgust, watching one particularly vile pundit state confidently that the fight had been nothing but a hoax engineered to make the Royal States look bad, and after what had been done to them after the Abigail Fey incident, they had all deserved it.
“It doesn’t look good for the rest of the world either,” Lola Urduja said briskly. “There is an insurgency problem happening within the Royal States, and many other terrorist factions in other kingdoms are using it as their rallying cry. There are many Americans on the ground who are fighting back against these nationalists, but it does not bode well when King John remains in power, with no clear way to remove him from his position.”
“The Snow Queen has my flute,” Zoe said through gritted teeth. “That’s what’s inciting them.”
“The guillotine could help pursue…peruse…change the American king’s mind,” West spoke up. “Jasper’s been managing Three Wishes while we were busy. She says that’s been a popular sentiment among a lot of his subjects recently.”
“It’s not like you to be baying for blood, hijo,” Tita Baby said.
“There are limits to being nice. And there are limits to it if the other side doesn’t want to be. Otherwise, they’ll just walk all over you and still say you’re the one being mean.”
“Wise words, Lord Eddings.” Lola Urduja riffled through the reports that were coming in, brow furrowed. “We need to reach out to the grassroots, the ones who are familiar with their own localities. We need to coordinate with them, offer what spelltech they can use.”
“Now?” Loki asked. “We’re literally still in hiding.”
“All the better. No one quite knows where we are, but their guard is down. We do not need to divest Maidenkeep of manpower to aid when we have cargoes of spelltech waiting to be used and the logistics needed to bring them to where they’re needed most. If the resisters within the Royal States are willing to accept our assistance, then the old coot will be too busy frothing at the mouth to do much. It’ll take the heat off us at any rate. Let us not limit ourselves to just the Royal States either. They do not have the monopoly on greed.” She looked up crabbily. “Do we have all the contacts we’ve gathered from the Three Wishes?”
“Zoe transferred all the necessary information you’ll be needing to my console,” Dexter said. “I am already reaching out to some trusted sources she says will keep our secret for as long as we need.”
“Dexter!” Tala cried, turning. The boy’s face grinned back at her from a secondary screen. He was still in his hospital bed, but his laptop was out and he was already typing furiously.
“Before you say anything,” Dexter said hastily, “I got the doctor’s permission to do this. Dad’s not happy, but he understands. I’m not even doing a quarter of the workload that I’m used to doing inside the command center. I have all the details I can access just fine here.”
“You’re not supposed to be doing any work at all!”
“I was the one who worked with Zoe for these contacts. They trust me too,” Dexter said pleadingly. “Please let me help. I’m not good with weapons, but I am good at this one, so let me be useful. I deserve a crack at the queen, too, in my own way. Plus I’m going bonkers sitting here doing nothing.”
Lumina sighed. “At the first signs of fatigue, I’m going to ask someone else to take over, understand?”
The face on the screen brightened. “Yes, ma’am! I’ve already got a few replies, and they want to help. Zoe and I had set up a system where we can drop off the wares and have them picked up without needing a physical meeting. They say they want anything that can break through walls as quickly and as quietly as possible, and also something to bypass ICE’s security like we did when we infiltrated their detention facilities.”
“ICE?”
“They’ve been using the prisons there to hold more than just the asylum seekers. They’re bypassing local enforcement laws and keeping a lot of activists under arrest without reading them their Miranda rights or even saying what the charges are.”
“I think I can help out with that one,” West said. “Lemme talk to some of them.”
“What are you planning, West?” Loki asked suspiciously.
West flashed them a wide beaming smile. “Trust me. Besides, Dex is on hand to keep the reins on me, right?”
A low, resigned sigh came through the speaker.
“What about Alex?” Tala asked. “Sword wielder or not, I don’t want to make any big decisions while he can’t give the final say.” She looked down at her sword. She hadn’t tested it out yet, but its main purpose seemed to amplify the abilities of her agimat. She looked down at her tamatebako next, which she still kept in a sling around her waist. She’d somehow taken the adarna’s shadow into the box, and it might have potentially saved its life, whatever the Snow Queen might intend while its physical body remained the woman’s prisoner. “I’m going to Alex,” she said. “I want to test something.”
Tristan was by the king’s bedside as always, and he looked up, puzzled, when they all arrived.
“I have no guarantees about what happens next,” Tala warned him before he could say a word. “But I know Alex would have wanted me to at least try. Don’t freak out just yet.”
“Somehow you telling me not to freak out is making me do exactly that,” Tristan said, but he managed not to look too anxious when Tala set down the tamatebako on the sheets, then focused the flat of the sword against Alex’s chest.
It was, in many ways, like using her usual agimat, only this time, she was using the sword instead of just the incorporeal shield she was used to all her life. Having something physical to hold on to made her feel stronger somehow, and not just because the sword was amplifying her abilities.
She’d never really known how Ken had managed to be so intuitive when it came to working out what his sword could do. It had also been an extension of his twin swords, Yawarakai-Te and Juuchi Yosamu, but he’d done more than both swords were capable of, like its blinding bursts of light or the sudden strength to cut twenty-foot ice dragons effortlessly in half.
She was starting to realize how.
Visions flooded her mind—not of the future but of images of her, showcasing the many ways in which she could use Agimat to wake Alex. It was like she was staring at multiple parallel-universe versions of herself, each one making a possible choice that the sword was suggesting to her.
There were three options this time, and not all good. In the first, she was delving into Alex’s mind, fighting her way through the demons that kept him bound to his sleep; her mirror alternate’s strength visibly waned, even as Tala looked on. In another, she had—much to her horror—let Alex die, usurping his powers from the Nine Maidens as his life waned and taking control of it to fight the Snow Queen herself. And the last had been to give up again. Tala saw herself relinquishing the sword, sticking it back into the stone like she had done months before.
She was beginning to understand why the seeresses had difficulty in predicting the future when the Nameless Sword was involved.
Had Ken seen these parallel visions each time he’d had to use Kusanagi? Tala finally understood what the Cheshire meant when he described the fear he had felt when he rejected the sword. She hadn’t known that rejecting it would be a constant battle she would have to fight.
But Ken had done it. Every time he had wielded Kusanagi, he had done so with a witty quip and the determination to do his best despite the odds stacked against them. And what would actually be unworthy of her was not being able to honor him and do the same.
“What are you planning to do?” Tristan asked worriedly.
“Everything I can,” Tala said and focused on Agimat.
And just like that, she knew what she needed to do. The spell that surrounded Alex and tied him by fate to the Nine Maidens was just that—magic that she and her agimat could technically circumvent, though the power required was much more than one person had on their own.
Without the sword, it would have been impossible. A vortex of silence surrounded the sleeping king, and it negated the healing spells the medics attempted on Alex, keeping him imprisoned in his own mind. If she could just get past those barriers and find a way to reach out…
It felt like a black hole, where any attempts to be in command of her own mind were sucked away into the void, like the barrier the Nine Maidens had put up was doing its best to vacuum up her will. It was like diving into molasses without a bottom to reach.
The thoughts in her own head turned ugly, putrid. What right did she have to hold the sword? What right did she have to change fate? Every king and queen who wielded the Nine Maidens was meant to die as a warning—a reminder that even those who tried to wield its power for what they believed to be true and good could not escape the consequences of its spells. Alex had already defied destiny before. What right did he have to receive another chance? She couldn’t even save Ken. She couldn’t save Cole or her father.
They sounded like her own thoughts, sounded like every single insignificant insecurity about herself manifesting all at once. The Nine Maidens used your own insecurities against you, took a truth you’d always thought about yourself and threw it back at you like images in a funhouse mirror, reflecting the bad things you’d ever believed yourself to be, even if they weren’t the truth. That was the legacy of the Alatyr, for all the good some of its rulers had tried to do with it.
“Fuck you,” Tala hissed under her breath.
It wasn’t easy. Somewhere within this thick syrup of magic was Alex, and she knew he was battling to get out just as hard as she was trying to find him. And while she had never been good at fighting for herself, she’d always been better when it came to fighting for someone else. She had a sword in her hands and a promise to keep.
In her mind’s eye, she was raising that sword, using it to cut through the darkness to reveal what lay beyond. She was sick and tired of being told she wasn’t good enough, that she wasn’t worthy enough. With Agimat’s own abilities surging through her, giving her what she needed to repel the rest of those intrusive thoughts, she was tired of believing all that too.
She slashed through the void, but the abyss fought back. The twilight stuck to her sword, threatening to pull her in with it, and Tala realized this was the real threat. If she hesitated, she could likely be sent into unconsciousness in the same way Alex had.
Not gonna happen, she thought.
Tala thought of Ken again and his sword—Kusanagi’s ability to cut through all nonliving things using Yawarakai-Te as one of its dual cores. An agimat was supposed to do the same with spells.
The trick is to find the point where the magic can be cut off from its source, to do with as you wish, Lola Corazon had said.
Tala cut up more of the darkness, and it gave way, solidifying enough that she could start carving out chunks from it, revealing a low but steady light beyond. Emboldened, she renewed her assault until she had cut away enough of the night to hear a soft, dearly familiar voice echoing from somewhere behind it.
Tala?
Tala bolted awake, and Tristan jumped back. “You were out of it for a while,” he said warily, watching as she finally registered that she was back at the hospital room. “It was like you were in a trance. I didn’t want to wake you just in case, but I was about ready to call a nurse when it woke.” He gestured at the firebird, who had nested itself at Alex’s shoulder, cooing anxiously and stroking the boy’s face with a wing as if it hadn’t been comatose alongside him. “I wasn’t sure what was going on…”
His words trailed off when Alex stirred and grunted, opening his eyes.
“Alex?” Tristan was by the king’s side in an instant.
“Tala,” the young ruler croaked. “It could have caught you, too, you jerk.” And then he cracked them both a weak smile—easily the best thing she’d seen today. “Thank you.”
Nobody really knew what to do with Ken, if the apparition before them could still be called by his name. All the undead were keeping their distance, perhaps sensing that the sight of them brought the living discomfort. They stuck to the Nottinghams’ burial grounds for the most part, content to stand around aimlessly and do nothing until Adelaide or another Nottingham could give them their marching orders. None were willing to leave the boundaries of their former resting place, and it seemed like an unwillingness rather than any actual magical restrictions keeping them in place.
Nya showed no fear. She strode into the graveyard, and no one thought to stop her. Tala saw her sit quietly beside Ken’s form. Beyond his initial greeting, the former sword wielder had said nothing, choosing to remain with his fellow departed, but the boy’s unnatural quietness did not perturb Nya. Some of the wolves approached them, lying meekly by their feet like they were domesticated dogs.
“Am I the only one who thinks this might not be the healthiest way for her to process her grief?” Loki whispered. They and Ryker stood beside Tala, keeping a watchful eye on the girl with her.
“I don’t know if this is grief that I’m seeing,” Tala said slowly. Nya was in surprisingly good spirits. Tala couldn’t quite hear the one-sided conversation that was taking place, but Nya was talking and gesturing animatedly while Ken kept an aloof if respectful silence, and it looked so wrong, when it was Ken who had always been the garrulous, charming talker and Nya the exasperated listener. “Nya’s not at liberty to tell us what her plan is. Still, I can’t help but hope.”
She looked down at her Agimat. The sword had changed when she used it to heal Alex. It felt coarse and wooden underneath her fingertips despite its now sleek and shiny appearance, almost like the arnis sticks she was fond of using. She swung it experimentally, and despite their fresh bond, it was a familiar feeling. “We can do this,” she said quietly. “We will.”