Weather’s wet and the Conclave’s arguing. Yep, Spring is here. For those of you aren’t absolutely fascinated by procedural amendments to constable proceedings, there is a sparkle of good news. Baseball line-ups, star hitters and draft rumors, right here, right after these words from…
Spring 19
Word of Aldersman Lee and the theft ran rampant through Sevensborough by dawn the day after.
Oliver, naturally, found out two days later when he overheard gossip during the lunch rush.
“I hear Lee had an apoplectic fit!”
“Bet he had to find a fainting couch!”
“Is he broke now? Ah, I live for the day he gets tossed out for rent like one of us!”
The mayor’s first thought? Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
Though his thoughts soured as he considered this fresh mess.
Who was the most likely culprit? Probably another of Tommy’s goons…
Unfortunately, the gossip next informed him that the thief had been a slight-figured blonde lass; that the offense had been great enough to send constables to Lee’s estate; that several broke bounty hunters were suddenly flush with cash…
Soon as the rush died down, he left Jimmy to watch the diner and hurried onto Main. He forced himself to wave to the laborers headed back to their jobs, doubts gnawing beneath the surface.
I saw Lee just yesterday! The aldersman had surrendered the funds for his portion of the council upkeep without a fuss. Which means either Lee is bluffing from the brink of insolvency…or he found someone willing to foot his bill.
He swung into a fine establishment full of upstanding folk for a quick investigation. Biting back nausea at the cheap liquor, he counted heads.
“Who’re you looking for?” the bartender asked.
“Johnny.” A bounty hunter more likely to return a lump of man-shaped meat than a mark.
“Found work.”
“Boxer?” A gentler sort, more dangerous for that subtlety.
The bartender grinned. “Found work.”
“Lots of work today…” the mayor worried.
“Spring’s a busy season,” the bartender agreed. “If you’re looking, I could…”
Oliver declined and ducked back outside. Blinking against the sun, he immediately spotted another disquieting sign: a trio of adolescent gangsters lounging at a corner. They stayed on the south side of the street, toeing the very edge of their territory.
They cross that line, and Boucher won’t hold back.
Tommy was a conqueror of the ramshackle south; did the boy understand the difference between that land and armed territory?
Absorbed in conversation, the boys missed the mayor. Like most young men, they talked loud and free.
“…are you going to wait for those limp-wristed gobblers on the council to make a move? This is an opportunity!”
“You say that now, but did you see that stiff-jawed nun?!”
“Her jaw can be stiff as steel as long as there’s the cash to…”
Belatedly noticing Oliver, they suddenly shut up.
“My advice?” the mayor offered. “Leave the church alone. Sevensborough has plenty on its plate without poking a cragbear.”
If they asked, he could tell them about their predecessors. Every year some young man realized the treasure piled onto the collection plate. His fingers got itchy. The first time was easy. He invited a few friends…
Then one day the troupe would depart Sevensborough, intent on earning their day’s bread from the plate, and never return.
“Go lick a bumper, old man.”
He shrugged. “Good luck.”
Better warn Sixborough congregations. And have Boucher put a few stronger men on the street just in case.
From there, he crossed the bridge over the creek into Sixborough, continued through to Fifthborough, and circled north until he spied the spiked fence of the military base. Looping back via the narrowest alleys, he arrived at Woodhaven from the north and slipped up the service stairwell to the Mishkan loft.
Chewing his worries, he knocked three times.
A sleepy girl still in her nightgown finally opened the door.
“It’s past lunch, Valkyrie,” he sighed.
“I was up late.”
“Doing what?” he asked, shoving his way in.
She pointed around the counter to the kitchen table, covered with oiled rags, door locks, window locks, handcuffs…
“Where in the world did you get all that?!”
“Sebastian.” She slid over to the table and held up a pair of handcuffs. “Watch this.”
Oliver took stock. An antique guitar lay propped in the corner; cushions and blankets covered the couch; the jungle wood table was permanently stained with grease; and a mountain of dirty dishes lay in the sink awaiting a manservant.
We have a petty queen on our hands!
Undeterred, Valkyrie plopped into a chair, picked up two thin pins, and handcuffed her hands behind her back.
“Please tell me you don’t practice this alone.”
“Just watch!” She rolled the pins in her palms and navigated by fingertip until she found the latch on the cuffs. Eyes heavy-lidded in concentration, she wiggled, probed, and popped free. “Easy as cake!”
Drawing closer, he divined the order in her chaos. The piles of locks were stacked by difficulty; the grease stains marked her progress. She had conquered fully half the locks. The very model on his own diner doors was next in line!
“Every mother wants their child to have a talent…” he muttered.
“Honestly, I always figured it would be harder,” she hummed smugly.
“Oh? Mind taking another crack at it?”
“Sure!” Valkyrie cuffed herself again. Spinning in her seat, she wiggled the picks at him. “See, first–”
He confiscated the picks.
“H-hey!”
He hooked her chair with a foot, spun her away from her table of toys, and knelt before her. “I have a question for you.”
She kicked.
He caught her foot in one hand and then pulled the chair again. Pinning her one leg under his elbow and her other with his knees, he stared her down.
“Head butt and I’ll lay you out,” he warned, his tone forged steel.
Valkyrie wiggled and shouted, “What’s your problem all the sudden?!”
“Did you steal Aldersman Lee’s papers?”
“What?!” She flinched away.
“Not even surprised, huh?”
“I live with a prescient butler!”
Fair, but we’re not letting you off so easy. “The primary suspect is a little blonde girl. Did you steal them?”
“Why would I–”
He tightened his grip on her leg. “Answer the question.”
“No!” she squeaked.
“Meet my eyes and say it.” I don’t care if you hate me. This is important.
Valkyrie raised her chin to meet him, betrayal fresh in her gaze. “…no. I didn’t.”
He held her eyes to the count of five.
“I didn’t steal Lee’s papers, and I don’t know who did, Mayor Oshton.”
Satisfied, he released her. “Okay.”
“Sodding…” the girl muttered, wiggling against her cuffs. “I thought you were smooth!”
“Smooth? Valkyrie, while you’re nibbling cake and playing escape artist, I am trying to keep Sevensborough stable. Not good, not kind. Stable. All those scandalous articles you read in your high borough school? I was there, holding boys for their last gasp because some idiot decided he wanted to move up in the world. Lee has hired headhunters, and they’re not a picky sort. It won’t matter what you stole or didn’t. Right height, right build, close enough.”
She stared at him resentfully.
“Paperwork on your case is almost done. We can host your pledge in an inner borough, and we should consider getting guards for this building.”
“Pledge? What pledge?”
Her ignorance sparked a rush of anger through his head. The damned girl hasn’t even read her own papers! Did she think I had them sent so she could draw on them?!
Taking a deep breath, he explained. “The pledge is a formality. You must renounce your sins in a public forum on your birthday. Thankfully, any public forum will do. Lawyers suggested a gazebo in a crowded park, and we can have Ali on hand just in case.”
“Renounce my sins?! So I can be lily-white as the goddamn priests?!”
“I’m well aware its hogwash, Valkyrie!” the mayor snapped. “Its ritual hogwash, and ritual is all that’s holding this country together these days!”
Aldersmen councils and House petitions and borough papers…these are all we have. Valkyrie, I know you’re young. I know you’re pissed off. Just, please, tell me you can feel in your gut just how much worse things can get.
The girl turned her head. “Already heard this one from Mom a dozen times.”
“Fine. I’ll spare you a repeat. For what it's worth, I’m sorry to grill you, but I take my responsibilities to the borough seriously.”
“You’re the only one who cares about that rat’s nest,” she sulked.
“That’s okay,” he replied. “At least there’s one.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
This is the least that I can do
She squirmed, chewing and discarding the clever comebacks of the young. Finally, she sighed. “Can you uncuff me now?”
“Where’s the key?”
She nodded towards a particular pile of junk.
He fetched a keyring from under a greasy blanket and knelt behind her. “This is a lesson too. Constables know to take away your toys. Yes, they’ll check. Your hair, your bra, your mouth.”
Soon as the cuffs popped, she leaped away. Rubbing her wrists, she growled, “I get it.”
Then she tipped her head to the left, listened, and frowned in consternation.
“Something wrong?”
“Perfect opportunity for a tart comment…” she muttered to herself.
Rie…why won’t you talk to me?
He arched an eyebrow. “Careful with echoes. They can be as cruel as their original owners.”
“Whatever you say, mayor,” she deflected.
“I’m trying to keep you in one piece.” Just like everything else I touch. “Echoes and ghosts want an ear to listen, and they’re not picky how.”
“I’m being careful. I’m staying out of trouble,” Valkyrie recited.
Likely the best he would get from her.
He nodded, wiping his hands on a clean rag. “Did you write a response for your mother?”
“Not yet…”
“Don’t make her wait. She’s worried about you.”
“I know…” the girl evaded.
“If I don’t see that letter by end of week, I’m sending Sebastian after you.”
“Cruel!” she shivered.
First reasonable thing she’s said today.
“Twenty-six days. Count ‘em. You’ll survive,” he encouraged.
Waving, he stepped out of the loft.
Valkyrie immediately slammed the lock behind him.
“Sensible,” he muttered, heading for the stairs.
He found his heart racing. On the long route back to Sevensborough, he sorted out why.
One part was simple adrenaline. He had threatened to deck her as though he could follow through!
Thank god she backed down. I’m too used to smacking around the hard-headed borough boys to deal with someone’s princess of a daughter.
How could he punish someone like that?
Spanking, maybe?
Then again, had his mother’s ladle ever once taught him a lesson he didn’t discard by dinner time?
He continued to chew as he crossed the creek. Eventually, he nailed the real stress: injustice.
Oliver Oshton, towing the party line. Hells, at her age I’d hate me too!
Though at her age he had known nothing but the farm and starry stories of distant Lumia.
Yes, the pledge is hogwash. I know it. She knows it. The form still matters.
The Houses threw parties like Lumia never happened. The priests mounted the pulpit to champion purity while they stole the donations. The radio talked prosperity while his brothers back home shoveled an inch of ash from the farm. The constables shouted of peace while they pressed their knees harder into the boroughs’ backs.
Even worse, he endorsed the whole façade every time he trotted down to the Conclave for the borough report. Every time he greased a palm to overlook an empty warehouse wagon or knocked some boy’s head to save the constables the trouble.
He understood the urge to lash out.
He wished he was still young enough to believe such defiance made a difference.
Down-trodden, he returned to the Mayor’s Dive around second bell in the afternoon. It was deserted today, even the regulars off to better business, except for one customer in the back corner.
Belle waited, tucked into the corner booth beyond the windows, feeding fresh chips to a phoenix.
His phoenix, in point of fact!
His secret phoenix!
The elemental beast chirped and nudged the woman for another chip.
“Mayor Oshton!” Belle exclaimed. She glanced between phoenix and man. “Oh, she’s yours!”
“Yes,” Oliver drawled, glaring at his orange chicken. With Belle distracted, the phoenix stole three chips from the woman’s plate. “That is my secret ally, Nix.”
“Why, she all but flew into my arms!” the Wavespeaker smiled. “She is not territorial at all – very well behaved. Not even a single scorch mark on the ceiling.”
Nix chirped, accepting the praise as her due.
“She saves the scorching for the kitchen.”
Belle giggled. “So that’s how you get such well-grilled burgers!”
Oliver ran his hand over his thinning hair. “Alright, let’s not give away all my secrets at once! If Mirielle shows up, I’m done for the week.”
The Wavespeaker tipped her head. “The only Mirielle I ever knew was Lady Visage in the papers. Oh, but you were an Inventor. Is that how you could afford to open a diner?”
“The very last dregs,” he admitted. “Between the aftermath and the stupid sanctions, a gold just don’t go as far anymore.”
She nodded somberly. “It has been difficult. The city had barely been evacuated before scavengers started stripping wood from the walls in search of the fabled Visage riches.”
“Still don’t understand why anybody thought Mirielle kept gold in her walls!” he chuckled, approaching.
His feet urged him to go forth and sit, but he hesitated at the edge of the booth.
“Do you dream of the glory days?” Belle asked, her voice bitter.
Her afterthought added:
Glorious for some, I suppose
Dreams? Mostly House minutiae. Don’t know why my brain sees fit that I remember a Mirielle meeting from Summer seventeen!
Still strange to have such memories where the hands that turned the pages were not his own.
“It is a miracle that I survived. I try not to think about it.” Clearing his throat, he put away such dour thoughts. “To what do I owe the honor?”
“I decided to write another letter to Valkyrie. I was hoping…” Belle’s cheeks flushed nicely. “I was hoping you’d review it for me?”
Oliver dared to sit. “Of course!”
His heart beating faster once again, but this time for a better reason.
***
“After I thought he was okay for an adult…” Valkyrie hissed to the empty loft, one ear perked for Rie’s commentary.
A few desultory drops of rain smacked against the windows. Still nothing from her passenger.
The girl growled at the loft. “I was accused of theft three times before I took so much as a pencil! I’m the daughter of an excommunicated heretic! Obviously I’m the one who stole a tin of snuff from the principal’s desk! Couldn’t be the star baseball player!”
Conner at least made it up to me! Unlike the adults!
She wrestled two irreconcilable visions: pining for her friend Conner the smart-arse and rage at Conner the slick-haired lout that would volunteer her for bait.
Thinking of him led her to Katherine and Lyla. Were they shopping for graduation gowns by now?
Soured on Oliver, cut off from her friends, Valkyrie shuddered under intense loneliness.
“Rie, talk to me!”
When the demon remained silent, she hopped to her feet and marched into the library. The central table groaned under her prior readings, most abandoned by page thirty like an over-ambitious novel, and she shuffled through the ancient tomes at random.
Her hand came to rest on a leather-bound diary.
She pulled the diary into her lap and skimmed over maps of ancient powers; sigils and sketches that once emblazoned artifacts of Edens; elaborate diagrams of a worldship engine born of living metal and Light; and finally found an interesting page.
My beloved daughter complained of a dream lost with the dawn. Despite her complaints, she shows little interest in learning how to master the dreaming self. Alas, my Ali, you have inherited your father’s patience.
A man might marvel, ‘Ah, Lord Mishkan, you are the very soul of contemplation!’
Yet we build our strengths from our faults, and I did not Bloom with such a cool head. Nor did I face the Tyrant with the composure of a hero. He played me like a fiddle! If not for Sebastian’s counsel, he would have won.
Having endured, having paid my tithes in blood, I then steered my ark for ten thousand years. Ten thousand years with naught but Sebastian for company. Perhaps this was Fortune’s gift, that I might face the raw silence of the void.
It was either to strangle my demons or to go mad.
My victory was a near thing.
In the hopes that my struggles should inform the future, I record here the meditative techniques once taught by the sages of Eden.
May they be the stepping stones to wisdom.
“Would bite Oliver nicely in his mayoral butt if I showed him some magic next time…”
Returning to the living room, she sank into her couch fortress with the diary across her legs and gave a few tries.
“Legs crossed, hands resting, breath on the up-count…”
Breathing exercises; mantras; sigils…Such foreign words, strange in their beauty, fighting her tongue as though the air refused them.
Was it her imagination, or did the loft grow warmer around her?
Alas, occult words alone held no power, and she could not bring herself to a focal point. Every time she reached twenty-count on measured beats, she flashed back to Oliver’s authoritarian glare.
Blame the dancing girl. Blame the blonde harlot!
Even if she had stolen the papers, then what? Would he clap his hands on her like some two-copper bounty hunter?
She clenched her fists and swore into her hair.
“Why the icy hells are you Lee’s side?! Swallowing the dregs hook line and sinker!”
For a moment, lost in her fury, she drifted free from her senses. A meditation of rage from which she heard an aloof whisper.
Such artful deceptions we craft ourselves
We edge our lies with a bit of truth for extra bite
“Rie?!” she squeaked, slamming back into her body.
No answer.
“Are you mad at me?...”
I thought we were thick as thieves.
She flipped through the journal again, searching for an answer.
It offered wisdom, spun with gentle care over thousands of years.
Words and words and words and no answers!
She missed Sebastian’s entrance until he dumped his heavy bags of groceries on the kitchen counter.
“Found Gabriel’s journal, I see,” he commented offhand – as though she worked down a checklist!
“This was the Archangel’s?” Valkyrie reassessed. “I would have expected more…you know…eldritch incantations.”
“Wiser men than I once counseled: never invoke anything larger than your head.” The angel of Witness turned to the sink to clean the girl’s mess. “What have you found?”
“Let’s see…bunch of old maps…doodles of some jewelry…a pretty nice sword…whatever this is…” Valkyrie tapped her finger on the diagram of the worldship engine. It reminded her of a heart, strands of fiber and metal woven into a pulsing core. “And fifty pages of different techniques for reaching one’s own garden – none of which work.”
“Tested all fifty already?” the butler asked. “Even…”
“Okay, not all fifty!” she interjected. Don’t be dense on purpose, manservant! “I don’t even know where I’d find a tincture of laudanum!”
“Sevensborough, of course. The first hit is always free.”
Ignoring him, she asked, “Why would an Archangel keep a journal? Wouldn’t he remember?”
“Why do men sing when they already hold the notes in their heart?”
“To share, I guess?”
The angel nodded.
Valkyrie stilled, flipping through her demonic vocabulary. A flight from Eden, a worldship, and a journey of ten thousand years…
“Kind of a small book for so long a life, isn’t it?”
Three hundred forty-one pages to be precise.
“Count the pages in Gabriel’s journal twice.”
She glared at him; he washed dishes.
Sighing, Valkyrie counted again. Three hundred forty-two.
Missed a page.
She counted again: three hundred forty-three. Then three hundred thirty-one. Then two hundred ninety-nine!
“What in the icy hells?!”
“A journal is a vessel for memory. Even angels do not hold all our memories in conscious thought at once. The words rise when called. Rather like a mortal’s daydreams, really. Though we must wonder: for what do the powerful dream?”
Donovan and the hunger for power
The Archangel and her terrible Blade
What of you, Valkyrie?
No matter how many times she counted, the page with the worldship engine remained the middle page. “And this?” she demanded.
Sebastian smiled, daring her to ask more. “The topic must be on someone’s mind.”
Hand on the page, Valkyrie shivered with a morbid thought. Because of this book, I never knew my father.
“But why?” she wondered. “Why’d Donovan call for such ruin?”
Mirielle memory might relate the facts, but she knew nothing of the why.
The butler raised a finger. “To understand a point in time, you must understand the preceding current. Donovan sought a simple prize: power.”
“Couldn’t find a plug?” she drawled sarcastic.
“Correct!” Sebastian nodded. “An automobile engine, a plow, and a Great Work all obey the same basic principle. Will must be set into motion. Whether the source is combustion, muscle, or the soul, there must be a motive force brought to bear.”
“Aren’t souls supposed to be infinite?” So why’d he have to make it everyone else’s problem?
“Another day, perhaps we should ponder how one might measure infinity. For the moment, however, consider his first impediment: his own Guardian. The Guardian of the Garden holds the flaming sword before the gate to unfettered Light. Much is demanded of those who wish to taste that well.”
For the Guardian bathes in Chorus Song and remains the higher self
Aloof and apart in heaven’s memory
Mortal danger no threat
For what terror is the Black Gate to the Guardian?
He spun the echoes with a weaver’s ease, and Valkyrie’s ears popped as she listened.
Like every word cracked her a little wider open.
“He aspired to great heights at low cost. Fleeing a hostile Guardian, he instead became a thief among the Mighty.”
Valkyrie flipped the journal back to that map of ancient power. Reservoirs.
A Mirielle-memory of a glowing gemstone held in porcelain fingers rose.
“Perhaps angels should keep better track of their precious little gemstones,” she snapped with Mirielle’s lilt.
Ignoring the barb, Sebastian lectured onwards. “All living beings echo; to touch is to be touched. Angelic echoes ripple through slumbering souls, stirring dreams of glory. We might trace the ripples one at a time. From Gabriel and I, the Covenant angels; did they rise to rule because we did not? We aspired to a world that would forget Eden, but we brought all its ancient sins…”
“You can pick at your navel in comfort while people suffer and die!” Valkyrie growled. “I’m sure its great fun to spend a century tending a single tree, but not all of us have that kind of leisure!”
“Time passes the same for rich and poor alike. She was quite specific on this matter.”
“Oh, forgive me, great lord of all the stars! For I am a mere grub before your splendor!”
“Yet ‘grubs’ bound the Stormmother on the Plateau. How does a mortal man triumph over an angel, however briefly?”
Annoyed now, Valkyrie slammed closed the journal. If he was going to drive this conversation like a mule in one direction and only one direction, she was not going to humor him with pointless questions.
Just spit out your axiom already
“Service and sacrifice,” he continued. “A soul unified in purpose and aligned within Chorus’ Light. Sacrifice, even unto his life, allowed that ‘grub’ to exceed an angel in that moment.”
Suicide by another name. What’s so great about that?
“A man only has one life to give,” the angel mulled. “Yet an angel has none. Strange, isn’t it? That the lamb might own a currency beyond the reach of the mighty! What else do we miss for the very roar of our own passage?”
An edge of wistfulness transformed the butler into a frail old man.
Sighing, Valkyrie took a little pity. “You’ve been here a long time, haven’t you?”
“The second oldest angel still walking Malkuth,” he agreed.
The first, of course, is Jörmungandr
Valkyrie, at fifteen, sometimes felt suffocated by the weight of her own future. She could scarce imagine looking forward thousands of years. “Are you…tired?”
“There is no shame in weariness. Malkuth is vast and wide, a stone too great for even a Principality.” Sebastian shrugged. “We forget that, sometimes.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll remind you all. This mere mortal will speak Truth to Power!” she bragged.
“Please do,” agreed Sebastian, clasping a hand over his breast.
I am counting on it
Finished with the cleaning and sorting, the butler bowed. “Our hopes and dreams shall ride with the Valkyrie.”
From anyone else, sarcasm.
But he stared straight through her.
“I’ll…try…I guess…” she mumbled, glancing away from the obnoxious servant.
“That is all I ask.” Straightening, he picked up his empty bags and walked out the door.
Leaving Valkyrie frowning with the feeling that she had played her part exactly as required.