As far as Reina was concerned, she had already received extravagant returns on her investment in joining the Society. By the close of summer, only a quarter through their allotted year, she’d already wound up with riches. True, she had left very little behind, so perhaps the upfront sacrifice had been minimal, but the point remained that she was enjoying herself, in her way. The access she had to the Society’s archives—to the reading room itself—was everything she had longed for. It was precisely what she had dreamed the Library of Alexandria would contain, and that was only at the surface level; the most elementary access to ancient scientific and magical thought. Having managed a mere three months’ worth of research on the physics of force and space, Reina had already seen the grimoire by Circe and the lost oeuvre of both Democritus and Anaximander.
Which meant that her continuing motivation was, at an extreme minimum, only to not lose access. These were the ancient works in animism, naturalism, cosmology, but what would come from the medieval medeians, who could have only contributed in secret? What about the Enlightened? Would she see the works of both Isaac Newton and Morgan le Fay? Impossible to tell until she got there, which meant, quite inescapably, that she must.
Reina spent more of her free time in the reading room than the others of her initiate class, testing the limits of which texts she could access regardless of the subject at hand, which was why she was slightly more aware of who else came through the Society’s doors on an occasional basis. There was one Society member in particular Reina recognized: Aiya Sato, a woman who sat on the board of directors for a massive tech conglomerate based out of Tokyo. Aiya was the youngest self-made female billionaire in the mortal economy and a celebrated medeian as well. Her face was a frequent feature, each of her feet securely settled in both worlds.
“Oh, you must be Miss Mori,” said Aiya. The two of them were both waiting for the results of a summoning from elsewhere in the archives, and Aiya, a consummate networker, had struck up conversation in their native dialect. “Tell me, how was the installation?”
Reina gave few details, never having been one for conversation. Aiya, however, was very chatty.
“I suppose it must be very different with Atlas Blakely at the helm,” she was saying, at which point Reina stopped her.
“Were you initiated long ago?” It seemed impossible. Aiya looked very young, hardly over thirty.
“No, not very. Only one class before this, in fact.”
“You were in Dalton Ellery’s initiation class?”
“You know Dalton?”
“He still researches here.”
Aiya blinked, surprised.
“I would have thought Dalton would be the first to move on,” she said, looking a bit unsettled. “I can’t imagine what he’d still be doing here.”
“Is it not customary for some members to stay on?”
“Oh, it is, but not Dalton,” Aiya said, puzzled. “You know what his specialty is, don’t you?”
Reina struggled to think of anything he’d said or done that seemed particularly noteworthy.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Dalton’s an animator,” Aiya offered emphatically, as if that should mean something.
“He can bring things to life?”
“Things?” Aiya said, and chuckled to herself. “Yes.”
Reina frowned. “Is he—”
“Oh no, not a necromancer,” Aiya corrected quickly. “That is, he can do it, but he prefers the inanimate and metaphysical, or at least he did when I knew him. You know he’s from somewhere in the woods of Denmark? Or perhaps the Netherlands. I can never remember when it comes to the Nordic countries, and he dropped the ‘Von’ I think—but the point is, there are legends in his village about a boy who can spirit entire forests to life, even the wind itself. He’s modern mythology.” She smiled faintly. “I can’t imagine why he’d have agreed to stay behind, though I suppose he’s quite young still. And he was always Atlas’ favorite.”
“I thought Atlas had been the Caretaker for some time,” Reina said, recalling that Aiya’s comments about Atlas had been the thing to spark her interest in the first place.
Aiya shook her head. “No, it was someone else for quite a while. An American, for nearly half a century. His portrait is here—” She waved a hand disinterestedly. “Somewhere.”
“But you know Atlas?”
“He was essentially what Dalton is now, I believe. To tell you the truth, we didn’t see our Caretaker much; Atlas did most of the work. Do you see him frequently?”
“Atlas?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, almost daily.”
“Hm. Odd.” Aiya smiled. “Though I suppose he was always very enthusiastic.”
“Is it common for researchers to take over the position of Caretaker?” Reina asked. Researcher appealed to her; Caretaker, with all its corresponding logistics and politics, did not. “Will Dalton be next?”
“Well, to be honest Dalton is precisely the sort of person who would want to be a Caretaker rather than a researcher, but no,” Aiya said. “Atlas was a special case. Caretakers are usually selected by the Society’s board of trustees from well outside its internal functions.”
“Any reason for that?”
“Something about not drawing from a poisoned well, I’m sure. Not in Atlas’ case, of course,” she added as an afterthought. “He would have been a natural choice for it; he’s so well-liked. Dalton, though… a mystery.” A frown. “I would have thought him more likely to pursue something else.”
Their books arrived side by side. Reina’s was a duplicate of Leucippus’ The Great Cosmology. Aiya’s was untitled.
“Do you come back to the archives often?” Reina asked.
“No, not very,” said Aiya. “Still, it is a valuable resource. There is much more than you can imagine contained within these walls.”
She tucked the book into her bag, turning to Reina with a smile.
“Please do enjoy your time here,” she said. “It’s all worth it, truly. I had my doubts at first, but in the end, you really must believe me. I would do it over, easily.”
“Was it difficult?” Reina asked. “The elimination process.”
Briefly Aiya’s smile faltered. “Initiation itself, you mean?”
“No, I mean… is it difficult,” Reina attempted to phrase, “choosing which of your initiation class to eliminate?”
“Oh, yes. Unimaginably.” The smile resumed. “But as I said, it is worth it. Have a wonderful day,” Aiya said, offering Reina a polite, deferential bow and turning quickly away, the sound of her stiletto heels echoing through the reading room.
Reina had the sense that she had just had a very strange interaction, though she couldn’t quite explain why. The sensation stuck with her for most of the following days, flitting in and out of her thoughts without deriving any solid conclusions.
Between working, sparring with Nico (Reina had felt he was the stronger hand-to-hand combatant and also, she needed the exercise), and reading for pleasure, there wasn’t much time to concern herself with the irrelevant or the unimportant. She was quite content, really, though she had the vague sense that the others around her weren’t.
MotherMotherMother, one of the ferns whined one day, fawning droopily over a shelf. Mother there is troubletroubletrouble in the air, Mother pleaseplease do you see it?
At first Reina assumed it was the unholy alliance burgeoning between Callum and Tristan. They had always been very likely to be found in each other’s presence, seeing as a line had (intentionally or not) been drawn between the physical specialists and the others, but lately it was becoming less likely to see one without the other. They were frequently in furtive conversation; usually Callum leaning in while Tristan spoke. Reina had thought it was a good thing, or at least a perfectly fine thing, as it meant that Parisa would not have Tristan glued to her side. Gradually, though, it became more evident that Parisa was being punished for something; whether her punishment was coming from Tristan’s hands or Callum’s was relatively unclear.
The trouble with Tristan, and the reason Reina sometimes preferred Callum, was his meanness, his bite. It was sharp, brittle, and made unavoidably more malicious due to his…
Intelligence was an underwhelming word. Tristan was more than simply witty or clever or knowledgeable; he was quick, and always the first to see when something was wrong. At first Reina thought he was nitpicking, being contrary just for the sake of contradicting something, but it had become increasingly obvious that unless Tristan knew exactly what to correct, he didn’t bother speaking. He had, for better or worse, a breathtaking apathy to almost everything, which only collided with derision when something was problematically out of place. Reina could not decide whether that intuitive cruelty was worse with Callum, who couldn’t be bothered with any of their work, or with Parisa, who seemed to find herself above it.
Parisa’s outward demeanor didn’t change; not because she was suffering and trying to hide it, much to Reina’s disappointment, but because she was distracted. She didn’t seem to feel the loss of Tristan at all, and it wasn’t until the drooping fern bemoaned the state of oxygen in the room that Reina identified the cause.
“There is a natural transition from space to time,” said Dalton, who was standing beside Atlas, as he often was. “Most modern physicists, in fact, do not believe there is any distinction at all. Some do not even believe that time exists; at least, not in our fictionalized conception of it, where it can be traveled in some sort of linear way.”
The reminder of Dalton Ellery’s existence in the world brought Reina back to her conversation with Aiya, prompting her to think again of Aiya’s confusion over Dalton’s decision to return. In Reina’s opinion, Dalton seemed a natural academic—the epitome of ‘those who can’t do, teach’—and yet Aiya had looked as though the prospect of such a thing was incomprehensible. The idea that Dalton might be withholding a powerful magical ability that had required more than two years’ time to master was intriguing; even compelling.
And Reina, finally spotting the way Parisa’s eyes fell on Dalton, was clearly not the only one compelled.
She supposed it explained a lot of things; why Parisa was often unaccounted for, for one thing, and why the loss of Tristan, Parisa’s initial paramour of choice (or so it seemed) was not particularly bothersome to her. Immediately, Reina’s conflict about whether Callum and Tristan were ganging up on Parisa vanished, leaving her with a sense of disappointment in its place.
Of course Parisa was plotting something. She wasn’t a woman the same way Reina was a woman, or the way Libby was. She was a woman in the weaponized sense, the kind who would step on others to keep herself at the top, and from the looks of it, she was having no trouble getting what she wanted.
Even to Reina, the glance between Dalton and Parisa was intensely loaded. Whether something had happened between them already or not was unclear, but there was no doubt some version of it would be happening again soon.
“What are you doing?” Reina asked bluntly, cutting off Parisa’s path through the house during one of their afternoons away from research. “What exactly is the point?”
Parisa’s eyes slid to hers, irritated. “What?”
“Read my mind,” Reina suggested facetiously. Parisa’s glance in return was equally annoyed.
“Why should there be a point? He’s attractive. I’m bored.” As Reina suspected, Parisa had clearly read her thoughts already.
“You can’t honestly think I’m that stupid,” Reina said. “Nor do I think you’re that stupid.”
“Thank you, I think,” Parisa said, bristling in her lofty way, “but is there any reason you oppose this, or are you just rejoicing in being obtuse?”
“I don’t give a damn what you choose to do,” Reina said. “But I don’t like it when things don’t make sense. I don’t trust it, and I don’t trust you.”
Parisa sighed loudly. “Shouldn’t you be off playing with one of the other children?”
It never stopped being outrageous how the older three looked down on Libby and Nico, though it was far more ridiculous when people speculated separating them; venturing, as Callum often muttered, that one was more bearable than the other. In Reina’s mind, they were binary stars, trapped in each other’s gravitational field and easily diminished without the other’s opposing force. She wasn’t at all surprised when she discovered one was right-handed (Nico) and the other left (Libby).
“Deny it all you like, but those two have already proven their value,” Reina said. “What have you contributed so far?”
“What have you?” Parisa snapped. “You’re an academic. You can be an academic with or without the Society.”
Whereas Parisa was the oldest type of working woman in the book.
“Oh, very nice,” Parisa said, hearing Reina’s not-so-carefully concealed distaste. “You think that’s what this is? I’m some sort of gold-digging succubus and now you’re going to drag me before the magistrates?”
“‘Succubus’ is more flattering than the word I had in mind,” said Reina.
Parisa rolled her eyes.
“Look, I can see—even if you can’t—that you think you ought to feel sorry for me. It’s nice of you. And totally unnecessary.” Parisa’s mouth tightened. “Callum is not punishing me. He’s trying to beat me, but he won’t. And you might wonder who you should choose between us, but I can tell you right now: if you knew what I know, you’d choose me over him every time.”
“Then why not tell us what you know?” Reina demanded, only half-believing her. “If you hate him so much.”
“I don’t hate him. I feel nothing toward him. And if you knew what was good for you, so would you,” Parisa warned, as the potted Calathea in the corner shivered prophetically. “Now, are we done here?”
Yes. No. In a way, Reina had gotten exactly what she’d come for. Parisa was pursuing Dalton; confirmed. Parisa had something against Callum; confirmed. The ‘why’ of it all remained a bit distressing.
Unfortunately, Parisa could see as much.
“You know why you don’t understand me?” Parisa answered Reina’s thoughts, stepping closer to lower her voice. “Because you think you’ve figured me out. You think you’ve met me before, other versions of women like me, but you have no idea what I am. You think my looks are what make me? My ambitions? You can’t begin to know the sum of my parts, and you can stare all you like, but you won’t see a damn thing until I show you.”
It would be too easy to argue. It would be precisely what she wanted.
Not that silence was any different; Parisa looked unduly satisfied.
“Don’t envy me, Reina,” she advised softly, turning to say it in Reina’s ear. “Fear me.”
Then she made her way down the corridor, disappearing from sight.
