Discord's Apple Page 22

  “You are a mad blasphemer,” Arthur said.

  “Thank you, my lord.”

  Evie kept petting Mab’s head. The dog was breathing deeply, sleeping. “Hera lived,” she said. “And magic is coming back into the world. What do we do?”

  Merlin turned from the window. “Miss Walker, do you believe that Hera will start a war if she gets what she wants?”

  The apple still nested in her pocket, pressed against her hip. Long ago, Discord created the apple for the express purpose of sowing strife. Its power had not diminished. Hera would know how to use that power. Such a little thing, rolled onto the floor of the U.N. General Assembly. Metaphorically, of course. She would offer one or another country weapons, money, political dominance—and see them fight for the prize. She could offer one supremacy in space, another free trade, a third a telecommunications empire. Watch them take her bribes and do her bidding.

  “She can manipulate the one that’s already starting,” she said, not certain how she knew, or where her growing confidence came from. Except that her father was dying. He succumbed, and she knew more than she should.

  “Then we take our stand against her. Someone must oppose her.”

  Arthur gazed at Merlin with a shadowed look in his eyes. Past battles, lost wars—who knew what memories played in his mind’s eye?

  “Is that why we’re here, Merlin? To build a new kingdom from the ashes, as we did before?”

  “You are here because someone must oppose her. Who better than you?”

  Alex crossed his arms. “How? Oppose her how? Do you know where she is? What her next plan is?”

  Merlin scowled. “She’ll come here, of course. We’ll wait for her.”

  “We’d be fighting a purely defensive battle if we stay here. We can’t win.”

  Arthur sided with Merlin. “I’d like nothing better than to take the fight to her, but I have no forces and no knowledge of her position. Here, our position is at least mildly defensible.”

  “The house is protected,” Evie said. “No one gets in unless invited. No one gets into the Storeroom except the guardian and his heir.”

  The men looked at her, but her gaze was distant. She couldn’t pay attention to them. She recognized the Storeroom, the power it had carried for centuries, as her family immigrated from place to place, carrying its contents with them—somehow they carried everything as they traveled. The knowledge of how they did it eluded her still. She could ask her father. He’d know.

  “Then we’re safe for now,” Alex said. His brow was creased, watching her with uncertainty. Like he didn’t know her. “Perhaps we should get some rest. So that we’re ready when she comes back. She will come back.”

  Evie closed her eyes, wanting to forget. Give the knowledge back to her father. “Yes.”

  Arthur glanced out the window, his gaze searching the distant horizon. “We’ll keep a watch in shifts. Sinon’s right. You should try to sleep.”

  That was astute, the try to sleep. Evie felt exhausted to her very bones, but she hated the idea of falling asleep. Even with Arthur standing watch.

  “Feel like taking a walk?” Arthur said to Merlin.

  “Another scouting mission?” the old man grumbled.

  Arthur grinned. “I thought we’d make sure there aren’t any more of those dogs prowling around.”

  Merlin made a distracted motion of assent, and the two strode to the kitchen door.

  Before they went outside, Evie hurriedly stood and called to him. “Arthur. Thank you. Thank you for staying.”

  He nodded and gave her a smile—a vivid smile that would inspire his people to follow him into battle. They couldn’t lose, not with Arthur leading them.

  Then he and Merlin were gone, the door closed.

  Alex unbuttoned and peeled off his shirt, stuffing it into the trash under the sink. He washed his hands and arms to the elbows. The water ran pink off him. Evie’d guessed right, he was well built under his coat. He had sculpted muscles on his arms, shoulders, and chest, flexing with his movements. They weren’t excessive, but they promised an efficient strength.

  “You’re falling in love with him,” he said, his tone too flat to be mocking, as he stared at the running water.

  She started to be angry. She wanted to be angry at his presumption. But the emotion faded.

  Instead she made half a laugh and shook her head. “Of course I am. Aren’t you? But no, not really, I think. He’s too heroic. Larger than life, untouchable. Like Superman. He scares the shit out of me. I’m not good enough to fall in love with that. Not brave enough. Or beautiful enough.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short.” He stalked over the chair at the kitchen table and pulled on the clean T-shirt.

  She should say something here, she thought. If this were a story she was writing, the character would have to say something. She didn’t know what, so if it were a story, she’d have to walk away from it or put in some little stars to remind her to go back to it and fill it in. She liked writing because she could always go back and change things, or think of something better to say. Wittier. She had no wit.

  She looked away, to the table where her work was still scattered. Uselessly, now. The comics, her laptop, the stories they contained, seemed so far away. Her phone lay on the table among the debris. The screen showed a missed message. She picked up the phone—she had reception again—played back the lone message, and listened. It was Bruce, who didn’t leave messages, but always waited for her to call back.

  “Evie. Some of us—me and Callie, James, his roommates—are leaving the city. James has a place in Napa. It’s not safe here anymore. So we’re running. I don’t know when we’ll be able to come back. I don’t know when I’ll be able to get back to work. I just wanted you to know, Evie, working with you on Eagle Eyes was great. The best work I’ve ever done. You helped me do better than I ever thought I could. Thanks. Maybe we can do it again sometime. I’ll see you. When this all blows over.” The when sounded despairing.

  Useless. It had all been useless.

  She played the message again. Bruce sounded tired. She wondered how much work he’d been able to finish before fleeing. She hoped he and Callie and the others had made it out of the city.

  “Evie, you’ve gone white.”

  Shaking her head, she set down the phone. Sleep, rest—wasn’t that what she was supposed to be doing? She sank into the armchair, pulled up her knees. Her stomach was in knots. She’d never rest again.

  “Evie?” Alex moved closer. He looked like he might be about to hover. She didn’t want him any closer. He might try to comfort her, and she might start crying.

  She said, “How did you know to come here? How did you find this place?”

  He set his hand on the back of the sofa. “I tracked you down.”

  “But how?”

  Shrugging, he glanced away. “Old-fashioned detective work. I knew your family at the beginning. When you were first given stewardship of the artifacts.”

  The mind boggled. “When was that?”

  “Three thousand years or so. I lost track of the family for a while. They migrated a lot. Every time there was a war, one of them took the Storeroom and left. To protect it, probably. Some of the leads were almost impossible to trace. But I had plenty of time.”

  That was what she should do: collect the Storeroom and run to escape the war. But when war was everywhere, where could she go?

  She admired his dedication in spite of herself. “You must be disappointed. You did all that work for nothing.”

  “On the contrary,” he said, his smile softening. “I got to meet you.”

  She blushed and didn’t know what to say. Witless, again.

  “I have to tell you,” he said. “I might have given her the key to the house’s magic. I—I have another curse, you see. Apollo made this chain so that I must always tell the truth. I’ve found some fairly contorted ways of speaking around the truth. But sometimes I have no choice. I’m afraid I’m a terrible spy. Not li
ke the old days.”

  That was what happened when one tried being a double agent. She knew that from subplots of the comic book. As for the key to the house’s magic, and why Alex would know what that was—she didn’t understand. Still, some knowledge eluded her.

  “Everything you’ve said is true?”

  “That’s right. Or true to me, at least.”

  He said he couldn’t lie, and that he’d die for her if he could. What could she say to argue with that?

  “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “Because I want to.”

  She ought to ask Alex to tell stories about her family. All of them, back through the centuries. She didn’t know anything about her family.

  “I’m going to try to rest.” She smiled thinly, touched his arm as she passed him, and went to her room, shrugging off her jacket, the weight of gold still pulling at its pocket.

  “This is taking too long,” Robin said as he paced back and forth near the Marquis. Through a windbreak of cottonwoods, they could see the Walker house in the distance. The intrepid heroes had successfully defeated the Curandera’s coyotes. She had collected the animals from miles of prairie and turned them to her will, but they were only animals in the end. They could harass, but they didn’t know how to break into the house.

  This had all taken too long. They should have been able to overcome the mortals in the cemetery. Hera should have been able to make the girl hand over the apple. The whole affair with the elder Walker had proceeded clumsily. And now he was set babysitting the self-important magician.

  He’d stopped caring about any of that.

  The Marquis had cleared the weeds and brush from a space until only flat dirt remained. On the tablet of dirt he traced a series of figures in powdered chalk. A square, and in the square was inscribed a circle, and within the circle a star, with Greek letters at the points. Incense burned in a brazier. Red candles flared and flickered in the wind.

  “Time is master of us all,” said the nobleman. “Please be quiet.”

  “Can you really break through the magic guarding the house?”

  The Marquis’s lips tightened and he managed a brief glare at Robin, who was pleased at the reaction. “Prometheus built these enchantments and his magic is very old. But now that I know their maker, I’ve learned the nature of his spells.”

  He sprinkled a new powder on the brazier, which flared green. He held his hand over the star and seemed to meditate for a time. Impatient, Robin watched. This seemed like such a cumbersome way to practice magic. Artificial, structured, dependent on too many patterns, rituals, tools. Robin didn’t understand; magic had come easily to him. He’d been born in the wild and raised to its rhythms, had always felt the world’s power in his blood. He was part of that power, immortal, forever young. He had only to think, to wish, to be, and his magic came to him. He pitied the Marquis, who studied magic as a science and surely didn’t feel the power in his blood. Surely he would never be a god.

  “It didn’t take this long to find the path here.”

  “Yes, it did,” said the Marquis, unperturbed. “You were simply more patient then.”

  Robin was five times as old as this whelp. How dare he be so smug. “I don’t think you can do it.”

  “You certainly aren’t making the task easier. This is a different sort of problem, Master Robin. Finding the place was like following a blazing arrow pointing the way. It had already been found, and I had only to mark the path. This is more like storming a castle.”

  “Why couldn’t Hera do this herself?” That was always the rub, wasn’t it? Did you want to serve a greater power that needed your help? A truly great power wouldn’t need anyone’s help. He didn’t need anyone’s help.

  The Marquis said, “The risk. If I do it wrong, the house might kill me. Now, if you’ll pardon me.”

  Robin stared at him, curious for the first time all day. Now, this could get interesting. . . .

  The magician left the ritual markings and walked in a wide circle that swept around the property. Robin followed. The man had created another space, with similar markings, candles, and incense, exactly opposite the first. When they reached the other ritual site, Robin felt a tightness close in, a hum of power that hadn’t been there before. The Marquis had closed a circle of magic around the Walker house.

  “Remember, Hera only wants the protection gone. She wants the magic in the Storeroom maintained.”

  The Marquis sighed. “Will you let me do my job?”

  Robin couldn’t interpret the gestures he made, or guess why he did what he did, but he couldn’t deny the power, the shape of it, the tremor closing in on the house. It raised the hair on the back of his neck. He wondered what would happen if he kicked a little dirt over one of those symbols. The Marquis didn’t even see him do it.

  There was a presence, a force inside the house, and the Marquis was opposing it. Robin watched the house, expecting it to collapse, or burst into flames, or shoot lightning at them.

  Then the feeling went away.

  Expressionless, the Marquis let his arms hang loose at his sides. He said, “It’s done.”

  Then the Marquis dropped to his knees. He didn’t make a sound, just worked his mouth for a moment or two as if trying to draw breath. His arms hung as if paralyzed, and the realization seemed to pass across his face that while he had succeeded, something had gone wrong. Then he fell, facedown into the dirt, and lay still, dead, after what must have seemed too short a life after all.

  Robin clicked his tongue. “So much magic requires sacrifice. Hera will surely mourn you.” He kicked a bit of dirt on the Marquis’s nice coat.

  Time to fly, Robin thought, smiling. Nothing had frustrated him like this in centuries. He wanted to break something. It was invigorating. He raced away, light as air.

  Alex had become . . . overwhelming. If it were any other time and place, if her father weren’t dying and the world weren’t ending . . .

  And why should that make any difference?

  She curled up in bed, pretending that she might actually be able to sleep. Alex had said he was going to sleep in the armchair. She’d left him alone in the front room. She should go back, to keep an eye on him. Keep him company.

  She should stop thinking about him at all.

  A distant roll of thunder sounded, rattling the windowpanes. A winter thunderstorm. Rare, but not impossible. There might even be snow. A white Christmas. The holiday was still a couple days off. She’d forgotten. Evie pulled the pillow over her head and hugged it there. She was supposed to be pretending to sleep.

  An ache caught her gut, a feeling of such profound dread, she almost vomited. She pressed her hand to her stomach. She’d felt this when she got the call about her mother’s death.

  She sat up. Someone had died. Her father—

  Mab started barking, loud enough to shake the house, when she should have been resting. A door opened, squeaking. Her father’s door. She heard him say, “Mab, hush!”

  She stifled a sob. He was okay.

  A man jumped onto the bed.

  Before she could scream, he straddled her and shoved her back, pinning her with his legs and body, and locked his hand over her mouth. Glaring up at him, she struggled, but he only held tighter. Despite his slight form, he was strong.

  “Evie Walker. Evie, Evie.” His nose was an inch from her face, his breath caressing her. The young man bared his teeth when he smiled, vicious. He was Hera’s henchman, Robin.

  “Do you know what’s happened?” he breathed into her ear. “You’re no longer safe. These walls will not protect you. I turned myself to dust and crept in through a crack in the floorboards. What do you think of that?”

  Her mind raced, even as her body tried to thrash. She heard his words, but couldn’t make meaning of them. Scream, scream for help. But she couldn’t.

  He said, “Hera is coming. She can have the apple. I want you.”

  After hundreds of years, the island of Ithaca grew barren and diffi
cult, and the family’s prosperity was divided between too many sons. Niko hadn’t wanted his share of land, the wealth that lay in olive groves and flocks of sheep. He took the main of his inheritance: the contents of the Storeroom, packed away into an underground cellar. The artifacts were what he truly inherited from his mother, who had inherited them from her father, and so on, eldest child to eldest child, for generations.

  When the Storeroom came to Niko, he stood on the cusp of migration. He had to leave, or be drafted into the army. Under Alexander, Macedonia was swallowing the world. While he didn’t like to be called a coward, he felt in his bones he had a different calling, a stronger calling, one that meant he had to flee.

  The room was just large enough for him to turn around in. He surveyed the items, packed into shelves and nooks carved into the earthen walls. Swords, shields, helmets, lyres, winged sandals, golden fleece, woolen cloaks. One by one, he placed them in a leather satchel. The bag never grew heavier, never bulged, no matter how much he put in it. The bag itself was magic—the bag was the Storeroom, made small.

  Niko knew the stories. Even if his family had no magical legacy, he’d know what many of these items were. Here was the ball of twine Ariadne gave to Theseus, to lead him out of the labyrinth. Two quivers of arrows, one silver and one gold, had belonged to the twins Artemis and Apollo. And here, a golden apple bearing an ancient inscription. The characters had long ago faded from knowledge. Niko couldn’t read them, but he knew the story, and he knew what it said: “For the Fairest.”

  Gingerly, he set it into the bag with everything else.

  The Storeroom didn’t used to have this much, a vague familiar memory told him. But magic was going out of the world. Here it lay, inert, the stories finished and done with. The age of heroes had ended. It made Niko sad.

  All his possessions contained in a bag over his shoulder, he sailed west, to a peninsula of warring chieftains that seemed unlikely to unite and develop aspirations of empire-building anytime soon.

  14

  Night had come to the Sun Palace.