Evan was perched on the hood of the car. They didn’t seem keen on ignoring him, so both stood close together, taking a position that let them keep Evan, me, Fell, Ty and Maggie in sight.
I twirled the keys around my finger for a moment, waiting.
There were more Sisters coming. By unspoken agreement, we held our ground.
“Can you hear me?” I finally asked.
One woman nodded.
“Can we chat?” I asked, “Or have you sworn something or been bound in a way that makes it impossible?”
“We could talk,” she said. Her voice was muffled, and it wasn’t the wind. This particular spot was in the middle of the city block. The wind that did make it into the open space where the alleys converged swirled more than anything.
“Your boss, the Elder Sister… how’d she get you roped into this?”
“We volunteered,” the woman said.
The third Sister entered the… whatever this space was. The cul-de-sac of an alleyway. She stopped partway down, looking at the scene.
I waved at her, beckoning her over.
She approached, taking hesitant footsteps. Her hand was clenched, her thumb held between the middle and ring fingers of her right hand, so it touched the glowing ring that marked her as a Sister of the Torch. As an Elementalist.
She was older than the other two, and wore a small leather jacket over business casual clothing. With us in the spirit world and her in the real world, she was harder to make out, a little more vivid, as if she were standing under blacklights and we weren’t. She was either stronger than the others, or she was a little more Other.
She took us in. Fell and Maggie were standing off to one side. Ty stood next to me, holding the backpack in both hands.
“You guys volunteered to join the war effort, help the Elder Sister,” I said, to bring the new arrival up to speed and give them a nudge to maybe offer more details. “I wanted to make sure you weren’t lied to. This is dangerous, and you might reconsider if you had all the facts.”
“We know it’s dangerous,” the older woman said. “It’s an insurance.”
“An insurance?” I asked.
“We invest our time, two hours a week, while we’re in University. Learn the ropes, learn the basic spells, do the rituals until we can do them from memory, offer an animal in sacrifice to the spirits, and eventually forge our rings as we enter the inner Sisterhood.”
“And you give up the ability to lie,” I said. “You face greater risk from Others and predatory practitioners.”
“Yes, and we serve Conquest in exchange for his permission to do business in Toronto. We each make several Terracotta Soldiers -dolls- every year, we attend meetings in a rotation, paying fealty. All of this is a kind of insurance, and an investment.”
“For what?”
“Knowing you have the ability to set someone on fire is an edge, when you work in a high-stress environment, it gives you confidence. We can walk down a dark street in a bad part of the city, and you can be confident.”
“Until a goblin comes after you,” I said. “Seems like a pretty bad tradeoff. A lot going in, but the results aren’t all there.”
“Goblins burn just like people do,” she said.
She paused. I suspected she’d noticed what I’d noticed a moment ago. A carload of Sisters was drawing closer.
“Goblins can slit throats just like people do,” Maggie commented.
The Sister ignored her. “The other benefit is the Sisterhood. Contacts, the undeniable ties. We join, and we can’t step away, not completely.”
“That’s a good thing?” I asked.
“I think it is absolutely a good thing,” she said. “We’re a second family, we rise and fall as a group.”
“And when your Elder Sister is conscripted by the Lord of Toronto… wouldn’t it make more sense to preserve the group and let her fall, than to take the risk.”
“Not if it means angering the Lord of Toronto.”
“Not really buying it, Sister,” I said. “A tiny bit of magic and a close-knit sorority, in exchange for having to march off to war?”
“Once every few generations? Yes. A tiny bit of magic? Many people seem to think we’re weak because we aren’t practitioners first and foremost. We’re businesswomen, lawyers, mothers and wives.”
She looked at Fell as she said ‘people’. She turned her attention back to me. “Conquest picked us for a reason.”
“He did,” I said.
The car with the other Sisters arrived.
The silence lingered, cut only by the sound of doors opening. The Sisters at that one car got out, watching from a distance.
The older Sister looked at her charges. Herself, the two who Evan had stolen the car keys from, and now four more. “We’re not as weak as people think,”
“Maybe not,” I said, “But I don’t think that’s why he picked you.”
I saw her expression change a little. Concern? She didn’t look that comfortable in the cold wind. Her cheeks were red.
“Why, then?” she asked.
“Because he’s worried you’ll see through him. Practitioners in Toronto fall into categories. There are the ones who are oblivious, too small or minor to have really clued into the way things really work-”
“And how do things really-”
I talked over her. “-Like the Knights and you. There are the ones who know but couldn’t do anything about it, like Fell here… the ones who know and don’t care, perfectly happy to maintain the status quo, and there are the ones like me. Who know and can announce it to the world.”
“You’re not making sense.”
“The Lord of Toronto is weaker than he lets on,” I told the Sisters. “He’s a pretender. He uses theatrics to seem like he’s more than he is, to get people like you to bend the knee. He’s a false Lord, a figurehead.”
Her eyes narrowed.
I saw some other Sisters exchange glances.
I spread my arms. “Would I really challenge him if he was as powerful as he pretended to be? The Sphinx knows, but she doesn’t care, because apparently having something as messed up as that guy is better than sticking her neck out and being Lord herself. Fell knew, but he’s obligated to serve and keep his mouth shut.”
“Why tell us this?”
“What I was originally getting at was, well, if I’d brought you on board, there was a chance you’d clue in. Even if he wins, he sort of loses, because you come to resent him, or he loses respect and loses power as a consequence, on multiple fronts. By telling you now, I get the same result. Thank you for sitting still and listening.”
“This doesn’t change anything.”
“Think about it, take a minute, consider what it means to the Sisters and to your Elder sister.”
“She’s still in his clutches,” the Sister said.
“My companion Rose was too,” I said. “She suffered, but she did get out.”
“Our Elder Sister could be tortured if we don’t toe the line,” a woman said.
The older Sister -not the Elder Sister, who wasn’t even present- frowned. “The other option is that we deal with you right now. The crisis ends, we have Conquest’s favor, whatever he might be, and things go back to normal.”