Maxine decided to take a day off.
She was feeling pressure from all sides. Adam Arsenic had discovered a receipt for a large purchase of shifting weed, an essential ingredient in shape-altering potions, and was now demanding that she account for it. Genevieve, unsatisfied with Maxine’s lack of progress in finding Nightingale, was beginning to threaten her again. And she and Andra had made almost no progress in their attempt to come up with an alternate plan to assassinate the Demon King. Everyone around her had demands, and there was no way to meet any of them.
So she took the day off.
That morning, she and Drake woke early and managed to get dressed and eat before Adam arrived. She left a note on her door, informing both Adam and her carriage that she would not be available today, then the pair went off to the library.
It felt like it had been ages since they had last visited the library, one of Drake’s favorite places. Maxine worried that her various obligations had led her to neglect Drake during a key part of their development. She had nightmares of discovering that her child had become an adult, sad and frail, having grown up without a parent’s care.
The last thing she wanted was to be like her parents. She had been raised by faithful Roolians, impossibly strict followers of a god with endless arbitrary laws. For example, followers were only permitted to read books approved by the clergy. These books included religious texts, textbooks that did not cover alchemy or magic, select picture books, the occasional popular fiction, and books commonly deemed “literary.” In the case of that last one, Maxine had noticed that the rules seemed to be somewhat relaxed and some degree of sexual content was permitted. When she had asked her parents about this, they had explained that those books were art, and that some exception had to be made lest the church be guilty of suppressing literature.
Still, even with that exception, it was taught that libraries were as dangerous as brothels, temptations that drew innocent people into lives of depravity and sin. While Maxine had initially accepted this as fact, she had eventually started wondering why libraries were so bad. And, for that matter, why brothels were so bad. Her parents had explained that books could influence people, convince them that evil was good. However, Maxine had not found this explanation sufficient. Good, she had thought, had to be consistent, reliable and logical. Any book that tried to convince her that evil was good would be easily recognizable for its lies. And so, at the age of twelve, she had borrowed a book not approved by the church from a friend. It had been a sci-fi novel, about a group of scientists building a colony on an alien planet.
Science fiction, her parents had taught her, was dangerous. It drew people into a world of dreams and disconnected them from their real lives. However, when she had finished the book, a dry story full of terms she hadn’t understood, she found that her life hadn’t changed. She still remained her parents’ child, she still understood the difference between good and evil as they had taught it to her. She still did her chores and studies and went to church. She had wanted to ask her parents why, but realized that she would be punished for reading a forbidden book. So instead, she had decided to continue her experiment by reading another. Then another. Then another.
She refused to deny her child access to books the way it had been denied to her, so she tried to make regular trips to the library. There, Drake would wander through the shelves, pulling a stack of picture books and piling them onto a table, then spend an hour or two flipping through them. Previously, they’d just looked at the pictures, but now they were sounding out words, occasionally asking for help. Sometimes the sound of their little voice working its way through a particularly difficult word made Maxine tear up.
When they reached the library, things progressed much as they usually did. Maxine had to remind Drake to be quiet so as not to bother the other patrons which, as usual, led to them tiptoeing around in an exaggerated manner. Maxine posted up at one of the round tables in the reading area and watched Drake select their books. One of the librarians, a young woman with long, dark hair, wandered over to chat with Maxine.
“Your son is adorable,” she said.
“They’re not a boy,” Maxine replied. “But thank you.”
“Oh, sorry,” said the librarian. “Your daughter is adorable.
Maxine squinted at the librarian through her mask. Today she was wearing a grey one with a neutral, mannequin-like expression. Unfortunately, the eye holes were too small, making it difficult to see. “They’re not a girl, either. At least not that they’ve indicated.”
The librarian blinked. “I don’t understand. He has to be one or the other, right?”
Maxine briefly considered giving the librarian a lecture on gender theory, but instead opted for the simpler explanation. “Drake is an alraune. Alraunes are always intersex. They aren’t born male or female.”
“Oh, I see,” the librarian said, nodding thoughtfully. “But isn’t that going to confuse him?”
Maxine shrugged. “You seem more confused about it than they are. If they decide to be a boy or a girl, I won’t stop them, but until then I’m not going to push them one way or the other.”
“But that doesn’t seem fair,” the librarian protested. Maxine wondered why she felt the need to press this so hard. “No one else gets to choose. You should choose one or the other for him and raise him that way.”
Maxine sighed. This woman was so close to understanding. “It is unfair. That’s why I’m not going to force a choice onto Drake.”
“Then why’d you give him a male name?” the librarian asked with a smugness that suggested that she considered it a trump card.
Maxine cocked her head. “It’s short for mandrake. It’s another term for alraune.”
“But it’s still a man’s name,” the librarian insisted.
“Not for my child,” Maxine replied.
The librarian, seeing that she wasn’t getting through to Maxine, gave up and walked off to continue shelving books. Maxine sighed quietly to herself. Conversations like these were all too common. From the grocery store to the school to the castle, everyone wanted to know every detail about Drake and many of their questions got far more intimate than this librarian’s. Maxine couldn’t count the times she had to figure out how to reply to a “So does he have a…?”
Still, Maxine would not force a gender onto her child. Her parents had forced manhood onto her so subtly that it had been hard to comprehend that she could be anything else, even when she realized what had been taken from her.
Like with most children, her gender had been assumed based on her genitals, with no consideration for how she might feel about it. The idea that she was a boy had been treated as a matter of fact, leaving her with little room to ever question it. However, even having been raised completely sheltered from the possibility that the gender line might be crossed wasn’t enough to prevent Maxine’s true feelings from worming their way into her consciousness. Which was why her father caught her one day trying on one of her mother’s dresses. When he told her never to do that again, he had sounded frightened, not angry.
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Alraunes were intersex. But even if they weren’t, Maxine wouldn’t have raised Drake any differently. Maxine hoped that for Drake, gender would mean freedom instead of restriction, a way of expressing themself instead of a set of rules to be followed. If Drake wanted to be male or female, Maxine would not make herself an obstacle. Instead, she would provide whatever they needed, from changes in name, clothes, or pronouns to appearance-altering potions.
Maxine suspected that the subject most likely wouldn’t come up until Drake was a little closer to puberty, but at the rate they were growing that might arrive sooner than anticipated. They were already asking some difficult-to-answer questions like “What’s the difference between boys and girls?” and “Why are you a girl?” and her usual responses like “Boys are called ‘he’ and ‘him’ and girls are called ‘she’ and ‘her,’” were no longer satisfying. Drake was beginning to see that gender was somewhat arbitrary, with no single aspect of it being consistent.
After a couple of hours of looking at books, the two grew hungry and decided to find a place to eat lunch. As they left the library, Maxine briefly caught sight of an unexpected patron, Bessen. She sat hunched over a book, whispering softly to it. Wasn’t she supposed to be on the southern continent with the other members of the Guild? She wasn’t a deserter, was she? Maxine decided it was best to leave her be and left without making herself known.
The two found a small cafe where they ordered lunch. Maxine happily watched Drake kick their legs as they ate their pasta. Sometimes just watching Drake brought a warmth to her heart. Their moves and mannerisms filled Maxine with all kinds of corny musings about how amazing it is to create life.
“Next time I want to learn about plants,” Drake said suddenly.
“Oh? What made you interested in plants?” Maxine asked.
“Well, I’m a person, but I’m also a plant. And I already learned all about people. So I should learn about plants, too,” Drake explained, using their fork to push a noodle around their plate.
Maxine smiled. Drake didn’t know nearly as much about people as they thought, of course, but it was cute that they thought they knew everything they needed to know. It was even cuter that they wanted to learn more about their plant nature.
“I have some books on plants at home,” Maxine replied. “I’ll show you when we get back.”
There was a particular encyclopedia of medicinal plants she had in mind. It was far beyond Drake’s reading level, but they would love looking at the gorgeous illustrations.
With lunch finished Maxine felt herself beginning to relax, probably more than she had in months. Her problems suddenly didn’t seem to weigh quite so heavily upon her. After all, she had done a good job hiding her crimes. Arsenic likely wouldn’t find anything. Genevieve and Nightingale were larger problems, but ultimately they were really just one problem. Fixing one meant the other would be resolved. There had to be plenty of ways to contact Nightingale. She could hire a professional investigator, she could contact her acquaintances in the Guild. Priests were able to track people, too. Maxine knew there were limitations on what they could do, but she hadn’t bothered to inquire with any to see if it was possible to contact Nightingale. In fact, it occurred to her that there was a well-known mage in Rampart City who specialized in long-distance contact. With the advent of Magi-net, his skills had become increasingly obsolete and she had heard less and less about him. It occurred to her that she probably hadn’t thought of him in years. What was his name again? Scramble? Crumble?
It hit her in a flash. Scrimmle. A pale wisp of a man who worked out of a cramped basement near the religious district. Maxine desperately hoped his office was still open. Resolved, she paid for the food and led Drake to the religious district.
Religion was a sore point for Maxine. To her it seemed that gods were little different from demons, laying claim to the souls of mortals and treating them as a resource instead of as people. As a professional healer and a member of the Guild, she frequently had to work with priests, but she was finding this increasingly difficult. She was gradually realizing that her ability to tolerate the presence of priests was an artifact of her abusive childhood. After she had shed herself of her religious upbringing and instead began a career in alchemy, she had thought that the difference between herself and priests was simply a matter of lifestyle. She chose to live in one way, they chose to live in another, and there was no reason they shouldn’t be able to cooperate. Later, she had decided that while many priests enforced cruel and unnecessary rules, others were innocent and simply wanted to help people. Later still, she had determined that religion itself was cruel—with the possible exception of Sanguianism—and that it was impossible to be a priest ethically, but that it was necessary to work with priests in order to help as many people as she could. Now, however, she didn’t even believe that. The gods were not kind patrons who opened with welcome arms anyone who wanted to follow them and left those who didn’t be. They were jailors who captured as many people as they could and held them locked away.
Because once a soul was pledged to a god, they belonged to that god. When that person died, it would be up to the god to determine what to do with them. Either they would be welcomed into that god’s heaven or they would be tossed into Hell, an entire plane that served as a place for those the gods rejected to be punished. It was said that there were ways in which a soul could be released from a god’s grasp. Sanguis supposedly released any soul who asked, and Athor was said to be unable to stand contact with any soul touched by a demon. But Roolius clung to every soul he could get his hands on.
As a small child, she hadn’t understood the trap she was falling into when, at her parents’ beckoning, she had pledged herself to Roolius. Now, there was no hope for her after death. Her life was all she had, after that was just eternal torment. It was a silly fear, but going to the religious district made Maxine nervous, as if priests of Roolius would leap out of an alley and snatch Drake away. Rationally, however, she knew there was little to fear. Scrimmle was one of the few mages who struck Maxine as respectable. After all, he worked to help people instead of just blowing things up.
The narrow leading down to Scrimmle’s basement were sandwiched between a tailor’s and a religious bookstore. Maxine led Drake down the stairs to the worn door to Scrimmle’s shop. A sign on the door read “Scrimmle’s Long-Distance Service,” so it was safe to assume he hadn’t moved. Maxine pushed the door open.
Three figures turned to face her. The first, she recognized as the gaunt, patchy-bearded face of Scrimmle. Next was the grey-suited figure of Adam Arsenic. However, the person who most caught Maxine’s attention was the tall man with goat legs and long horns standing in a summoning circle.
“Mom, it’s a goat man,” Drake said, excitedly.
“Drake, run,” Maxine said. “Go to one of the shops. Tell them to bring you to Andra.”
Drake, hearing the fear in Maxine’s voice, clung to the back of her leg.
Scrimmle held up his hand, palm outward. “I would advise against that.”
“Seriously, Scrimmle? Did you forget to lock the door?” Arsenic asked.
“Hope you have a spell to dispose of bodies,” said the demon. Something about his matter-of-fact tone made Maxine shiver. Why hadn’t she brought a sleep potion? Or a blinding cloud potion? Or even a flash potion?
“I’m not killing a child,” Scrimmle said. Maxine pushed at Drake, trying to subtly urge them to go. She could keep Arsenic and Scrimmle occupied for a few seconds, enough for Drake to make it to the street. In an open area like that, they wouldn’t dare try to kill a child.
“There’s no need,” said Arsenic. “That’s Maxim Nobody. The ISA’s representative in the alliance, the very person I’ve been trying to sabotage. I’ll have to forge some evidence of his wrongdoings. It’ll take some maneuvering, but we can ensure that his transport to prison is made up of our allies, and his position will be freed up for Tarvis to claim.”
In a flash, Maxine realized what was happening. A secret faction within the ISA must have allied themselves with the demons. They were working to maneuver one of their own into her position at Andra’s side, possibly to assassinate her. Scrimmle must have been desperate for money after his customers dwindled with the advent of Magi-net and begun summoning demons to keep himself fed.
“I’ll cooperate with you,” Maxine said. “I’ll even give you proof of a prison-worthy crime, as long as you don’t hurt Drake.”
“We can’t let the child go,” said the demon. “Not after what it’s seen.”
“The Starfal campus of the ISA academy,” Maxine said hastily. “It has a whole department dedicated to studying unusual lifeforms.” And at least one friend of Maxine’s who would watch over Drake, she neglected to add. “You can send Drake there and they won’t be able to tell Lady von Ekko about your plans.”
The demon and mage looked at Arsenic, who nodded. “That would be standard procedure when handling any life forms created by an arrested alchemist. It wouldn’t look suspicious. Very well, what proof do you have of your crime?”
In response, Maxine removed her mask.