Diana smiled. “You don’t know what you’re doing, giving me a chance to talk about this stuff.”
“Give me your worst geek-out,” Ty said. “And I wouldn’t mind your email, so I don’t forget.”
Diana reached backward and grabbed a scrap of paper, scribbling her email down. “Don’t feel offended if I take a few days to reply. My modem only does twenty-eight kilobits a second, and I only have so much patience.”
I don’t think anyone present wasn’t horribly affronted by the idea.
“Like I said, grandfathered technology and sentimental attachments,” Diana said. “On to explanations. It’s about math, at the most basic level. Space, not the out-there space, but space in general. Proportions, lines, and really big diagrams. With this computer, I program the lasers…”
It was, in the end, not quite as boring as she’d said it would be, though it was pretty bad.
All the same, Ty hung on every word.
While I was thinking about implements, I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of implement a guy got when his defining trait was an inability to commit to a path.
■
The Sisters had a place that was as spacious as Diana’s place had been cramped. Diana hadn’t made her place a demesne, and I suspected I knew why. So long as she didn’t, the building was still partially his. Her mentor’s.
The Sisters had no such delusions, and the architecture seemed like a pointed statement to that end. Not a homage to the past, whatever their traditions. Only present and future, here, in a church without religion, cherry wood with traces of gold, water running along gutters on either side of the hallway, almost gold as it reflected candlelight.
Every one of the Sisters wore a deep burgundy robe with one sleeve longer than the other, their faces largely hidden, but for their lips, which were painted red.
A group of what I presumed to be initiates were in less ornate robes, sleeveless and ringless, kneeling before the altar where the Elder sister and her immediate subordinates were gathered. All initiates were twenty-something, attractive, and wore hoods that covered their eyes.
The Sisters had welcomed us in, but they mustered against us as an army now that we were in their territory. Their dolls were markedly better than they’d been just a few days ago. A step up in quality that suggested they were a hair more serious. They were more uniform in size and shape, suggesting they were being hand made or printed from some mold, and stood about as tall as an ordinary man, all with runes on their foreheads.
I remembered what they’d said about being looked down on, before. That they were more powerful than most assumed? Seeing this, it was easier to buy.
I wanted to think that the simple and restrained elegance of it seemed more imposing than Conquest’s alien realm, but that wasn’t quite true.
I felt like, if the Elder Sister somehow became Lord, like she’d planned, then it would be.
It was hard to breathe in here, and that had nothing to do with the ridiculous number of candles that made it seem almost brighter than daylight.
“I can’t tell if you’re brave or stupid,” the Elder Sister said.
“The two are so related you could say they’re inbred,” I said. “Desperation is a close cousin, but I wouldn’t say I’m desperate, either.”
“What would you say, then?” she asked.
“That you’ve declared you want to rule the city as Lord or Lady or however it works. I harbor…” I tried to think of how Diana had put it, “…no meaningful grudge. I can cooperate, I’m willing to let bygones be bygones and act toward the greater good.”
“Define ‘greater good.’ Because we’ve had anonymous threats to our families. Others are settling in the city, and you’ve brought nothing but pain and chaos with your arrival in the city. To me, that kind of endemic problem suggests demonic influence.”
Radiation.
I glanced at my friends. “You think I’m tainted?”
“I think it’s inevitable, and I really don’t like considering what that means in the big picture. Even having you here, I feel like we’re hurting ourselves.”
“But?” I asked.
“But your grandmother has visited from time to time, and I can’t refuse you and yours an invitation, now that her titles have passed on to you, along with the according rights.”
I nodded slowly.
“I don’t think it’s taint,” I said. “Just karma.”
“Karma is more directed.”
“Some of the crazy stuff that’s happened feels pretty directed.”
“We’re predisposed to see patterns. One of the first things our initiates learn is how to tell the difference between a glimpse of a spirit in fire, smoke or running water, and the pattern we want to see. Even before they awaken, we want them to have that much.”
“So, what, the universe’s vendetta against me is just a pattern I’m imagining?”
“I wonder.”
“Look,” I said. “You want to rule. I’m offering an exchange of favors.”
“No. Not with you, I’m sorry.”
“I back off for as long as you allow me, and give you one less person to worry about while you consolidate power and make your play. You just give me permission to-”
“No means no,” the Elder Sister intoned.
Her voice rang through the chamber.
Excellent acoustics, if nothing else.
“With me, then,” Rose said.
“You’re tainted too,” the Elder Sister said.
“Everyone’s tainted, if you’re going to be that general,” Rose said.
“Not by the demons. By Conquest.”
That gave us pause.
“You spent some time in his company, he’s bled out into you. You think it’s coincidence that you up and decided to form a killing squad of horrors?”
“What do you want?” I asked the Elder Sister. “If we’re all tainted by something or other-”
“The new ones.”
I looked over my shoulder at Alexis and Tiff.
“Yes, them. They’ll vouch for you.”
“Not interested,” I said. “Been down that road, and it’s looking an awful lot like a metaphorical rabbit hole, if we keep layering conditions like these on top of one another.”
“I’m not asking for servitude. The girl answers three questions, on top of the usual penalties, should you break the terms. No questions that would harm them or anyone they care about if they answer, and the questions are answerable at the time we ask.”
“Deal,” Alexis said, “if and only if you back off the Astrologer, on top of the conditions Blake wants to name.”
“The Astrologer has-”
“We know what the Astrologer has,” Rose said. “I can’t make promises, but we could see what it would take to undo the process. If you’re willing to hear out someone who’s tainted by Conquest.”
The Elder Sister considered. “Let’s discuss, then.”
Tainted by Conquest.
Note to self: Keep Rose away from the mirror.
My chest was still wax, and I wasn’t the only one who was less human than when all this started. Even Rose, who had arguably been inhuman to begin with, was traveling that road.
The sensation had been lingering since the first time I’d been told I’d die, like some sword dangling over my head, but it was growing more concrete now. A vague, nebulous idea of impending doom.