Mi-ja hadn’t the time to embrace the harshness of her new reality. There was only action, and she was still unsure where her place was in it. You’re in charge now, the chancellor had said before hurtling into oblivion. If that’s where he went. Both Grant and Rathgar had gone into that reactor room and not come out, and they’d left a mess Mi-ja could never hope to clean up. The responsibility had been thrown over her so carelessly, a suffocating plastic body bag, and she’d forgotten how to breathe.
But there it was. This was her circus now. From lieutenant to aide to . . .
Chancellor by proxy.
“Madam?” The door to the office opened to Mi-ja’s aide, Trey, also struggling with his new role. She had already been training him the last few weeks to assist her, ever since the chancellor had come to rely on her for everything. At least before Mi-ja was thrust into this office she’d been its unwitting understudy.
“Are they ready?” she asked, straightening her jacket, the badges against the breast heavier than she’d imagined. She’d thrown the question at Trey, but it had been meant for herself.
Trey nodded, his bobbing turban the same grey as his flawless uniform. “It will be live to all networks. Strike forces are also mobilizing, but they are on standby, awaiting your word.”
Mi-ja came around the desk and followed him out. It seemed like she was walking in a haze. “One thing at a time,” she heard herself say. She wasn’t about to bomb Winnipeg. Just to help those that would, a voice inside gnawed.
She took her seat behind another desk in a room that was lit so brightly it made her teeth hurt. There were many cameras, and nervous people operating them, and government and Task Guard officials. A backdrop of flags. She had already debriefed the prime minister, who was standing in this very room now and had already said his piece. How Mi-ja wished they could just handle it without her. How she wished so many things could reverse, and she could get off this freight train.
The light on the cameras flickered, the teleprompter loading with the speech she had written only a few hours ago, and she spoke. “Citizens of Canada, and these united nations. My name is Song Mi-ja, direct aide to Chancellor Lochlan Grant, coming to you from the Elemental Task Guard headquarters in Winnipeg. As Prime Minister Orison said only moments ago, we must be vigilant and unified in this time of crisis. We feel your fear and we recognize it, but this government, and the Elemental Task Guard, will not bend to it.”
Mi-ja had penned the speech by imagining all of Grant’s gravitas in the language, but it sounded so jagged in her voice. She’d have to become someone else, then, just for this moment, to convince everyone, including herself.
“Chancellor Lochlan Grant, shortly after his internal meetings at the United Nations, returned to Winnipeg as his Project Crossover reached a breakthrough.” She had edited out Saskia Allen Das’s part in that, for surely it had been pivotal, and Solomon Rathgar’s presumed end, because his key had been found, but he, along with the chancellor, had not. “The chancellor saw his work complete and has passed into the place known as the Realms of Ancient in the hopes that what he finds there will put an end to the Darkling Moon that Denizen-kind unleashed upon us all seven years ago.”
The security footage was burned into her eyes. She’d watched it so much it was trapped there, and always would be, which made destroying the footage futile though necessary. Saskia jumping. Grant lunging after her. A cloud of electricity bursting, and they were gone. Both of them. Maybe forever. Mi-ja had to believe otherwise. She needed the promise of an out to get through this.
She cleared her throat, took a drink of water from the glass at her wrist, and willed herself not to spill a drop. She continued. “We are confident that the chancellor will return —” No we aren’t. “— and when he does, the Denizen agenda will be put to rest, as will the differences between us.” Not if they are rising up now, ready to strike. “To those Denizens out there in the world — we implore you to move forward peacefully and in unity with the Elemental Task Guard. In this crucial time, we do not wish any further casualties, Denizen or human. Despite our good intentions, there were those Denizens who saw an opportunity as the chancellor went ahead with his noble work, Denizens who attacked our headquarters here in Winnipeg, hoping to stop us. We withdrew, but we will not hesitate to strike back should they test us again. We stand on guard for this country, for this world, for those who cannot defend themselves, and will do so until the Darkling Moon has left our skies at last, and we can rebuild this planet to the glory that it once was.”
The speech went on, the fervour rising. Mi-ja went elsewhere, separate from it all as the words came out of her with a passion she’d never had for this regime or any of what it stood for. But now rules and authority made her feel safe.
She was not in control, though. None of them were. She announced herself as the chancellor by proxy, but it was just another made-up title. They were all kids playing at war.
At one point, the words stopped, and so did the cameras, and her desk was swarmed, and she smiled up at the prime minister and the people who grasped her, congratulating her, telling her they stood with her. She smiled and smiled and smiled.
She should have run out onto Broadway when the Denizens had attacked and lost herself in the horde that had blasted their way through the gate.
It was going to be a long war.
Saskia kept her questions to herself. She wanted to know more about Roan, and she’d get there by hanging back, observing. Baskar followed more like an obedient dog than a Rabbit, and at first it made Saskia cringe, but then she recalled what they’d said: the dead were looking for something to believe in. Disgust turned to pity. Everyone just wanted to belong, and she didn’t blame Baskar for clinging to whatever acceptance they could get.
Roan led Saskia through the deep-cut channels of the canyon. Cinder Town, they called it. Saskia discovered quickly that Roan’s soldiers, the Hounds of Deon, were all Fox shades, and Roan took her down to the barracks first.
“The shades come to me,” Roan said. “I welcome them and I give them a bit of the light they crave.” Huddled in a corner of a long room, dug out of the earth, were maybe three Fox shades, crouching. Roan beckoned one forward, and Baskar assisted in grabbing parts from various nooks — branches, stones, layers of bark — laying it all down on the ground in a way that made Saskia think of Jet and his floor paintings with her tech garbage.
The Fox shade stepped into the pile of wilderness debris, and Roan stretched out a finger, at the tip of which was a flame. All at once, almost too quickly to see, the debris shivered into crackling, broken-jointed angles, and the shade went inside of it, pulling the body on like a coat. Roan really might be some kind of god, making her own followers in her image. Judging by Eli’s forces, he’d learned how to do the same thing.
Maybe with the Onyx, and how it could fix corrupted shades, or pull them into it, Saskia was doing it, too.
“Tell me,” Roan asked, without turning to Saskia. “Where did the shades go when you turned on your clever stone?”
She needed to answer very, very carefully in order to proceed. “I don’t know how it works,” she admitted, which was only partly a lie. “Only that the Moth Queen wished to see the dead to rights, and I promised to help her. Maybe they want to rest. Maybe they’re resting inside the stone.”
Roan turned halfway, assessing. “Do you mean to release them on me, as your own army?”
Saskia felt the blood leave her face. “No! I just escaped one war, I’m not looking to get involved in another one.”
“Hm.” Roan seemed to accept that for now. She turned fully and led both Saskia and Baskar back out into the main thoroughfare of Cinder Town. “Either way, it is a clever trick. It would be useful against the Owl King. Without his soldiers protecting him, he will be weakened, and we can rest easy knowing he’s given up the Heartwood.”
There was that word again. Saskia glanced at Baskar, but they just shook their head at her. She hadn’t wanted to ask any questions but did anyway. “What is the Heartwood?”
Roan was in a generous mood. “It is a tree. A very valuable tree. It appeared long after the Owl King and I arrived. It is guarding something terrible. It should never be disturbed. Whoever controls it, controls this world. The Owl King currently keeps me from it — I’m concerned he will use it against us all.”
A tree that had appeared after Roan and Eli had . . . the only trees she’d seen so far were Hope Trees. Which made her think of Barton, which made her wildly guess — and desperately hope, this tree had something to do with him.
Eli was protecting it. Roan was trying to take control of it. Saskia needed to get to it and figure out the truth first.
Roan stopped then, hands on her hips, letting out a very deep sigh. “There is much, I’m sure, you don’t understand.” She pivoted on her heel, an elegant flourish, and Saskia was surprised — the Roan she knew was clumsy. “Before I take you farther, there is something about this world I wish you to know.”
Saskia folded her hands before her to keep them from shaking. She nodded.
“Grief cannot survive here.” Roan opened her arms, like a preacher. “This is heaven. Heaven is worth protecting, worth eliminating any threat for. Don’t you agree?”
Of course, Saskia had heard this all before, from the Task Guard, and so hearing it almost verbatim from Roan chilled her to her Keds. “It depends on how far you want to take it. I’m too young to know anything about heaven.” So were you, she wanted to tell Roan, but she didn’t. “I’m not here to eliminate anyone, either. Or be eliminated.”
Roan smiled. “I’m not really sure what you’re here for. But I intend for you to see it my way before either of us finds out.” The smile dropped like it hadn’t even been there, when Roan turned to Baskar. “Take her to the archive and tell her our purpose. Hopefully I can trust you to do that much.”
Baskar bowed their head and seemed to trill with excitement instead of flinching in fear. “Of course, Mistress.”
Roan appraised Saskia one last time and nodded curtly. “Perhaps once you’ve heard it all objectively, you will come to me as an ally.” She didn’t say what would happen if Saskia didn’t, but Saskia could guess that, too.
With that, Roan turned abruptly and left them behind.
Saskia dropped her face into her hands, running them through her hair and getting it knotted in the Fractal’s framework. “Okay. This is getting way too intense. Is she going to kill me or isn’t she?”
“Not today!” Baskar cried, looping a gangling arm through Saskia’s. “Did you hear that? She trusts me! Oh, lovely day.”
“Great for you,” Saskia groaned, and Baskar led her down a steep and narrow causeway, further into the canyon.
“All the stories I have collected and sorted are in the archive,” Baskar buzzed, and Saskia couldn’t help but catch on to their excitement. “Soon you’ll know all. Soon you’ll understand. There is no greater power than understanding.”
Saskia would’ve agreed once, but she didn’t know what it was going to take to understand what was going on down here.
They took a few corners and went farther down into a deeper labyrinth. Here and there were shades, in both poppet bodies and without, their eyes flashing at her as they passed. Saskia noted there were many Rabbits down here, intermingling with fewer Foxes than she’d seen above ground. Most of the Foxes seemed pressed into soldier service. There were even a few Deer, though Baskar explained that the Deer were the most likely to become Bloodbeasts, as their Realm was the first to shatter. There was definitely one other Family missing. “And the Seals?” she asked.
Baskar sucked in something like a breath, then she remembered that the dead couldn’t breathe. “We do not go to the Abyss. It surrounds us on all sides. They are protected by a Bloodbeast in the depths, and they are allies to no one.”
Things just got better and better. “This really is too much.”
Baskar swung around so quickly that Saskia bumped into them. Their hands steadied her, head tucked in concern. “I will help you through this,” Baskar said. “When you hear the story, you won’t feel so alone.”
Saskia blinked, not sure what to say to that. Baskar went ahead, beckoning. “Come and you’ll see.”
Baskar had gone through a doorway, and Saskia noted that scratched above it was a shape — no, a symbol. One she recognized from the many sigils that had shown themselves to her. Story came the interpretation from a place in her mind she didn’t know was there.
And a different word came up beneath it, a synonym — Narrative.
Saskia stepped over the threshold into an enormous room whose end she couldn’t find. Stacked neatly, from stone floor to stone ceiling, were strips of bark. Books handcrafted carefully. There were many of them. Baskar raced between the pillars gleefully.
“Oh my stories,” they said, making a good show of leaping into the air and spinning. “Oh, I am home.”
Saskia let out a nervous laugh and bit her lip. For a moment, she let go of what had brought her here, taking it all in and spinning, too, except much slower. “This is really something.” She bent to examine a slip under her foot and realized that the text written on the bark was made up of the sigils she’d seen. They hadn’t been some ill omen, then. Just a different language. The language of Ancient, of the gods that came from it . . .
Baskar snatched the sheet she’d been looking at, examined it, then raced off to categorize it. “Did you build this place?” she called after them.
Baskar seemed to swell with pride. “I collected these stories as they happened, yes,” they said, rickety hands wide. “It has been a glorious task. I could not stand for any of it to be lost. That is why my mistress kept me close. She does value the story, too — where she came from, where the Owl King came from. It helps her to look ahead.”
To Saskia, it seemed like all Roan was interested in was her war with Eli. But convincing Baskar of that might take longer than she had. “Can you tell me how it all started between them . . . down here?”
“By heart,” Baskar said, laying a hand across their narrow chest as if they were a thespian finally arrived to their stage. “Once upon a time, a fox followed a girl home. The girl was marked by Death. Death gave the girl to the fox, on one condition: she must banish a snake . . .”
Saskia sat still and listened. She had heard this story before. Ella had told it to her. Saskia had told it to herself. Everything was folding in on itself. She sat, cross-legged, as the edge in Baskar’s usually uncertain voice smoothed out. The way they told it, it did sound like something beautiful, something worth believing.
“I lived this story,” Saskia said when Baskar had paused, and they came down slowly on their knees before Saskia.
“So you know,” they said, “that Roan and Eli came down here together, as one.”
Saskia nodded. “They were looking for something. Like I am.”
Earlier, she had checked her tablet, and though the battery on it was reading fine, there had been no messages. Not from Barton, not from anyone. Saskia was out of her depth, and she needed something, someone, to cling on to. Heartwood. New gods. Baskar was casting a spell, and she was getting too tired to refuse it. She wanted to take a moment to not be hurtling forward. She needed to learn how things had gotten this way before she could untangle it all and do what she came here to do.
Remember yourself and what brought you to the other side, Phae had warned. Saskia repeated it again.
“Roan came first,” Baskar said, weaving their hands as they weaved their words, mesmerizing. “The shades did not respect her then. They blamed her for the loss of their god, Deon, and of the fire. But Roan carried the fire with her all along, and when she reclaimed it they followed her. It is how I met her, that first time.” Baskar’s voice overflowed with devotion. “She showed me kindness when the wilderness had shown only cruelty. I will forever be grateful to her for that. She gave me the first story and inspired me to collect these.”
Saskia nodded at the impressive collection they were immersed in now. “And Eli?”
Baskar raised one hand high, then let it drop, fingers angled downward like a paper airplane crashing. “One day, when Roan had accepted the fire fully into herself and turned away the grief she had felt in the Uplands, she and her shades watched as a strange winged creature fell from the sky.” Baskar’s fingers spread like wings. “It was the Owl King, but he was then called Eli, and he told Roan he was there to save her.”
Saskia shivered, remembering the brief encounter when Eli, himself incredibly changed, had shown himself. “Then what happened?”
Baskar landed a finger gently on Saskia’s nose. An affectionate gesture that reminded her of Ella, but not exactly — it made her remember how Ella used to make her feel when they traded stories of their heroes. It made her feel something in her chest, fluttering.
Baskar’s mask rose a little, which Saskia took for a smile. “They disagreed. They were always very good at that.”
As Baskar told her this story, Saskia fell into it.