Queen of faces, p.38
Queen of Faces, page 38
Sophie knew too.
She clenched her fists, and pulled twelve triggers in unison.
Twelve bullets flew through the air. A blinding white flash lit up around Ebbridge, blocking him from view.
Deep in the wall of light, Sophie caught a green flicker of electricity, crackling across the lake. Burning against the snow, then vanishing.
Sophie crawled forward on the rocky ledge, scanning the village below. From here on the mountain, she could observe her enemy in secret.
Tybalt Ebbridge had escaped the frozen lake. That blinding flash and the lightning must have been his Physical Codex, developed just in time for him to vanish.
Sophie had burned the corpses she’d made, then packed the ashes into a flour sack and mailed them to Paragon. They wanted to see a monster? Fine. She would give them their own training, served on a platter. Psychological warfare. Intimidation. Haunting your enemy’s thoughts, night and day.
In the aftermath, Tybalt had been declared dead, while the hidden world of magic was dragged into the light. After three months, Sophie had finally tracked him to Stemford, a tiny village in the Agricultural Islands.
This was her best chance at killing him.
But as her hunt dragged on, one key issue remained a mystery. Why? Why had he faked his death, abandoning his home, his wife and daughter, his fortune? Why was he here?
The question kept her awake at night.
She gazed through her binoculars. Children played on the outskirts of the village, chasing one another with sticks while their parents sat nearby.
Ebbridge stood over them, perched on the roof of an orphanage. His grey hair looked uncombed, and stubble coated his chin.
A pre-teen boy lay next to him, tied and gagged, his glasses stained with dirt. A brown-haired lad from the orphanage. The child struggled but couldn’t break free. Ebbridge had kidnapped him, then faked his ancestry papers, tying him to some old Caimorian family.
Why? What was he planning? Why pretend this boy was of noble stock?
Ebbridge knelt, pressing a hand to the boy’s forehead. Green light flowed over him. He was switching bodies with the lad, by force. The boy’s eyes widened, and he struggled harder, writhing. Then they both went limp.
The light faded.
Ebbridge woke in the body of a child.
The boy woke in the body of an old man. He stared down at his new physique. His sagging skin. The grey in his hair, and his wrinkled hands. In seconds, he’d gone from a young, spirited lad to a grizzled old man. His body shook, tears beading in his eyes.
Ebbridge flicked his wrist, and the ropes moved from the young body to the old one. They wrapped round the orphan, gagging and holding him down again. Ebbridge flexed his new, youthful muscles, gazing at the dam high in the distance.
He raised his hand towards the river above. His tiny thumb pressed to his middle finger, squeezing together, tensing with anticipation. His eyes lit up with a primal hunger.
Then he snapped his fingers, and the dam exploded.
A series of low booms rang out. Black fireballs blossomed in the massive structure, and cracks spiderwebbed over the stone. Sophie’s heart clenched. My flames. He was imitating her Darkfire. A unique chemical mix in the bombs, probably, that turned the fire as pitch-black as hers.
The dam shook. Slowly, then quickly, it crumbled. The tide rushed forward, rumbling like some ancient titan. A magically induced tsunami, charging straight towards the village. Strong enough to rip through buildings. Wide enough to swallow the whole town.
Humdrums screamed on the ground, fleeing. Ebbridge stood on the roof, tapping his foot.
Almost as an afterthought, he raised his pinky finger, and a torrent of white fire shot at his old body. It surrounded the limp, crying orphan.
The light faded, and the boy was gone. Vanished. Sophie choked. Those flames had to be Ebbridge’s new Codex. The ability that had let him evade her at the lake.
Ebbridge flipped off the roof, soaring to the ground. He strode towards the onrushing water, against the crowd.
The tsunami roared ahead of him, a wall of water thousands of feet long. A wave of destruction towered over him, big enough to level a fortress. It engulfed him, and he went out of sight.
Seconds passed. The wave kept rushing forward.
And a pale light grew from within the water.
White flames blasted out, a sphere of burning radiance. Clouds of steam exploded in every direction, then vanished as Ebbridge’s new Codex swept over them. The light spread, forming a wall that spanned the whole tsunami, a shield to protect the village. The wind howled around him, whipping his hair.
For a moment, Tybalt Ebbridge shone brighter than the sun.
When the light faded, the water had disappeared.
Ebbridge strode forward and pulled survivors from beneath the muddy remains of the field. Men and women swarmed him, kissing his hands. They hugged him, singing a thousand cries of gratitude.
Professor Ebbridge adopted a bemused smile. An old wolf, wearing the face of a lamb. One of the wealthiest men in the world, pretending to be poor.
He’d faked a magical attack from Sophie. He’d blown up a dam so he could pretend to save everyone. And he’d taken the identity of a young Humdrum orphan.
Through her binoculars, she read the lips of the people below.
‘How did you do that?’ said a villager. The Treaty of Silence was broken, but most Humdrums had never seen magic in person.
‘I – I don’t know,’ Ebbridge lied, stuttering. ‘I was in the orphanage and I – it just happened.’
The villagers asked him a hundred questions at once, pressing close. But one question rose above the din, spoken over and over. ‘Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?’
Tybalt Ebbridge adjusted his glasses. For a moment, the devouring white fire seemed to burn in his eyes.
‘Adam,’ he said. ‘My name is Adam Weaver.’
Sophie crouched in the corner and watched Anabelle Gage flounder through her memories.
The girl’s Edgar chassis limped up the stairs, dazed, grey, gripping a knife with shaking fingers. Sophie scanned the room with magic, confirming her senses weren’t lying. It was nearly empty, save for a desk, and two iron chairs.
The young illusionist had chased her to the submarine, all the way into this sanctum. She’d wandered into the mists of the frozen lake, where Sophie’s memories had swallowed her mind like a tsunami. Even now, she might still be struggling to separate her own thoughts from the ones she’d just experienced. Gage had bathed in the waters of Sophie’s consciousness.
Now she would drown.
Silent and fluid, Sophie darted behind the girl and swung her fist into the side of Gage’s temple, stunning her. As the girl spun, reeling, Sophie punched her solar plexus, knocking her into a metal chair.
The battle at Paragon had exhausted Sophie and spent her Pith. But even in this state, crushing the girl was easy.
A steel cable shot out of a duffel bag and tied the girl down. Gage vanished, making herself invisible with her Whisper Codex, but Sophie could already feel her through the cables.
Gage was out of moves.
Sophie reached her Pith into the girl’s pockets, patting her down. She ripped out a knife, a pillbox, and an assortment of other items. All of it went into Sophie’s bag, sealed and out of reach. The rest of the room was empty, aside from her bag and the chairs. A dusty wooden room, cast in a dim blue glow from the eternal twilight.
Gage made herself visible again, bound by steel. She wheezed and coughed, sweat soaking her clothes, tears pouring down her cheeks.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘I know,’ said Sophie.
She unsheathed her dagger.
i sagged back on the chair, held down with cables. The twilight sun shone overhead, casting the room in a dim glow.
A throbbing headache assaulted my senses, and my chest burned. I’d cry, but I didn’t have the strength. I’d scream, but I didn’t have the breath.
My eyes cast round the room. Something about it felt familiar, and recognition washed over me. It looked just like Sophie’s memories of the redemption camp. The teetering, three-storey barracks where she’d grown up, with no mattress, no blanket, no privacy.
I couldn’t use anything here as a weapon. The chairs were too heavy; Sophie was holding the cable with magic, and she’d sealed my gear into a duffel bag.
Sophie stepped forward, raising her Voidsteel dagger to my throat. Dark flames swirled around her hand.
‘Wait!’ I wheezed. ‘Please.’
She touched the blade to my windpipe.
‘Nima’s outside!’ I shouted. ‘Nima’s waiting outside!’
Sophie kept the knife against my neck but didn’t slice. Her eyes shone in the faint light.
‘Nima’s waiting in your sub,’ I said. ‘With two bodies and a boatload of Voidsteel bullets.’ My breaths were rapid, short; my lungs burned. ‘You’re not strong enough to beat them. Not when you’re this exhausted. Kill me, and you’ll have to fight them. Wait here, and they’ll turn your boat straight back to Elmidde.’ I inhaled. ‘So, let’s talk.’
Sophie sighed, stepped back and sat across from me. The ache in my chest exploded with new intensity. If I wasn’t tied down, I would have doubled over.
We stared at each other, catching our breath. A clock ticked on the wall, and a chill breeze whistled through the windows. I threw an illusion over her eyes, flattening my body language, hiding how terrified I was.
‘Where’s Korin?’ I rasped. ‘What have you done to him?’
‘Ah, Korin Nameless,’ Sophie hissed. ‘He said the funniest things when I drilled into his skull.’
I jerked in my chair, straining against my bonds. ‘Where is he?’
‘I sold him,’ said Sophie. ‘I passed him to a Shenti agent on the streets. An old contact, from our Commonplace brethren in Shenten. The same people I first bought him from.’ She shrugged. ‘He’ll be miles away by now.’
No. My chest tightened, and my burnt finger ached. ‘Sold him? For what?’
‘Truths.’ She didn’t elaborate.
Korin was gone. I’d failed him. A crushing weight settled on my chest, a stabbing pain that grew with every second.
‘Where are we?’ I coughed, hiding it with another illusion.
‘Westyn’s Throne,’ said Sophie. ‘This was his seat of power. A shard of magic, frozen in time and reshaped to my Pith. My memories.’
‘Then it’s true,’ I said. ‘Adam Weaver is—’
‘Professor Tybalt Ebbridge. Seventy-eight years old, if my maths is right.’
‘Prophets,’ I whispered. ‘Wes’s father.’ The dead professor, the fallen hero. ‘His father’s alive.’ He’d burned my pinky off, made me clean his bathroom.
And the redemption camps. Arthur Hyll, that sick, dying boy who couldn’t afford a replacement body. And Roger Cobbe, the janitor at Paragon.
‘The dam explosion—’ I choked. ‘I was playing outside the village, and he—’ The truth crashed into me like a freight train. ‘He drowned me, just so he could save me, and—’
I’d got sick because of him. Because his charade had put me in the hospital with a head injury.
Everything I’d been through. The brain infection, the Edgar chassis, Clementine, the last year, had been his fault. Not Khaiovhe. Him. All for some popularity stunt.
‘You were right,’ I said. ‘You were right about Paragon this whole time.’
Sophie laughed. ‘You crush half our revolution. You murder scores of our people. And now you see the obvious.’
‘You don’t care, though,’ I said.
Sophie shook her head.
She wished for my death. But she hadn’t killed me yet. She was probably stalling, looking for a way to get through Nima.
‘You could have told me,’ I said. ‘Back in the village, you could have told me everything.’
‘Would you have believed me?’ said Sophie. ‘The dark witch, the conniving wraith. The woman who freed Lyna Wethers. Would you have listened to such an outrageous story?’ She shook her head. ‘No, you chose your side, Anabelle Gage. One conversation, and I knew.’
‘The letter,’ I said. ‘It was you, wasn’t it? You exposed my identity to Paragon.’
Sophie nodded. ‘Me, and your old boss.’
‘Clementine?’
‘She told me what she noticed, back at the fish market when you were face to face. One crucial detail to unravel the mystery.’ She stared down at my finger stump, the skin wrinkled from a burn scar. ‘Your pinky. The moment she described that injury, I knew. Adam Weaver had maimed you. After that, we just had to flip through a yearbook, to find one David Chapman. She wanted to hunt you down herself, or join me in my pursuit.’ Sophie shook her head. ‘I refused. I knew Paragon could hurt you far worse than I ever could.’
‘And the kraken,’ I said. ‘How?’ Had she really unlocked the full power of the ocean?
Sophie stomped the floor, and green light rippled over the wooden slats. ‘This artefact. This world. It’s called Westyn’s Throne. Its magic is far older than Caimor, far older than the Eight Oceans, and the islands that were once mountains. When I found this and shaped it to my will, I knew it could act as a leash. I just had to find that ancient beast, that history that so many were willing to dismiss.’
‘And that’s where Korin came in.’
Sophie nodded. ‘This submarine ventured far north of Shenten, to the frigid rivers of the Ice Maze. Without his efforts, we never could have reached it. I do not command the sea. But Westyn’s Throne let me command that single creature. A chained wolf, for a moment.’
I swallowed. ‘For a moment?’
‘Mages?’ said Sophie. ‘We’re just children, playing with dynamite. But the oceans are rising. The krakens are stirring from their slumber, far in the depths. When their true masters wake, the chain will snap. And all our hopes will drown.’
The room grew chill. ‘You were right,’ I said. ‘So why did you hire people like Clementine? Why did you torture Korin? Why did you kill students in cold blood? Children.’
‘Teenagers,’ said Sophie. ‘Enemy combatants.’
My voice lowered to a whisper. ‘Why did you have to hurt Kaplen?’
Sophie shrugged. ‘He was a Paragon student. A nascent servant of evil.’
‘Kaplen wasn’t evil,’ I growled. ‘He was innocent. He was my friend.’
‘Monsters are your friends,’ said Sophie. ‘They are your neighbours and teachers and co-workers. They are good parents and honest workers and loyal spouses. But that doesn’t change what they are. This boy chose his path.’ She raised her voice. ‘So don’t talk to me about innocent, when you know nothing of the word.’
I gripped the arms of the chair, the metal digging into my skin.
‘There is a plot,’ she said, ‘that goes far beyond Adam Weaver. It has festered for millennia, unto the very foundations of the world, to the hollow sky and the all-devouring sea.’ She gazed outside. ‘Humans? We’re nothing more than flies, twitching on a web. Someone plucked a thread, and the spider woke up.’
I swallowed, and a shiver cut through the pain.
Sophie held up the locked Aeon Scroll. ‘But it doesn’t matter, now that I have this. Soon, I’ll have this open, with or without the key. I’ll know the truth behind these rising tides. The web, and the spider. What really goes on in that entrance exam none of us can remember.’ She dropped the scroll down a chute, and it fell out of sight. ‘Not that you’ll be around to see it.’
Stabbing pain exploded from within my chest, even worse than before. It felt like a rusty knife twisting between my ribs. The steel cables dug into my arms. I didn’t have much time left.
Sophie dragged her metal chair over to mine.
Most caterpillars die in the cocoon, I thought. Most caterpillars die in the cocoon.
‘Why haven’t you killed me already?’ I asked.
‘Because you were right,’ said Sophie. ‘If I fight your friend in this state, I’ll lose.’ She stood over me and sheathed her knife. ‘So, I won’t face them as me. I’m going to face them as you.’
My breaths grew short, rapid. I coughed, and my mouth felt chalky. ‘What?’
‘Now that I’ve talked to you,’ said Sophie, ‘I have a pretty good sense of your personality.’ She adopted a withdrawn, nervous expression, slouching her right shoulder. Mimicking my body language. ‘With a few Praxis spells, I’m certain I can fool your friend.’
‘It won’t work,’ I said. ‘You can’t copy my Codex. Nima will figure you out.’
‘Eventually.’ Sophie shrugged. ‘But all I need is a few seconds with their back turned. Besides, they’ll definitely give me some leeway, after I show them I’ve killed Khaiovhe.’
She was going to swap us and kill me.
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Please. You don’t have to do this.’ My chest felt ready to burst.
Sophie sat on the chair and touched my forehead with her palm. Pressure exploded at the point of contact, and blue light swirled around me in a panicked storm.
‘Wait!’ I shouted. ‘Wait!’
Forced transference. An advanced technique. Swapping our bodies with sheer brute force. Heat spread over my skin, and my fingertips went numb.
‘No!’ I screamed. The numbness spread to my legs, feet and arms.
Then my body vanished, and the pain with it. No more chest-ache. No more scorched finger. I floated alone in a black void. Fragments of Sophie’s emotions blurred into my mind, the burning core of her identity. The focus. The drive. The lingering ache of something lost forever, long ago. The rage, burning so hot it drowned out everything else.
I watched the world through two sets of eyes.
Anabelle Gage sat draped against a metal chair, held down by a steel cable. A square-jawed Edgar with a thick forehead, broad shoulders and grey hair. Its eyes were wide with shock, and fear.
A loathsome cage, my prison for almost a decade. Thanks to Adam Weaver.
Sophie sat back against the opposite chair, gripping the other body’s forehead. A woman with tangled black hair, breathtaking. Dried blood stained her face, her ragged gown. Her star-filled eyes burned in the dim light.
