Song of the Day | Charlie by Mallrat | Spotify | YouTube
The Dark Forest loomed around her in the clearing. The boar paced around the edges.
“The final test is coming."
The other unspeakable beasts lurked behind it in the shadows, their slavering and gnashing grimly audible. Soda thought about calling up the golden light, but she couldn't seem to find the strength. She tried to look around, but everything was the same: huge tree trunks, dusty ground, and toe-curling horrors lurking just beyond view. It bypassed any attempts at rationality and laid a heavy hand of fear over her. A deep, primal fear of the dark and all the things humanity thought they'd conquered.
“What’s the test?”
“A test of will."
“And if I pass?”
“Cleansing fire,” it whispered, sending shivers through the gathered ranks behind it.
“I don’t know if that sounds good or not. What about if I fail?”
The roiling shadows pressed closer, and the boar’s flaming eyes flared.
“Then… the feast…”
She woke up some time later, feeling like she had the worst hangover in the world. Her mouth was claggy and foul, her body shivered and shook. Streaks of lightning jagged across her closed eyelids in time to the thumping of her heartbeat. She retched but there was nothing to vomit so she just coughed and gagged instead. Then she indulged in a long, unhappy moan. Was this what winning felt like? It felt like going too hard on the molly. She reached for her phone and remembered she was waking up in a strange bed, and her phone wasn’t with her. She groaned again. Even the room she was in was tiresome. More filigree, more gold, more ridiculous wallpaper. There was a bit of mobile medical equipment in the room, with a drip stuck in her arm. The attached bag said saline. She was still in her black fatigues, small mercy. A tablet screen was propped up on the bedside table and a red light started up as soon as she sat up and moved around. A few seconds later, a call came through. Resisting the urge to ignore it, Soda grimaced and pressed Accept.
“The heroine emerges!” Evangeline’s triumphant face appeared onscreen, perfectly coiffed and red-lipped as usual. Obviously world-saving magic was a doddle for her. “How do you feel?”
“Like I took every drug known to humanity and washed it down with a bottle of Bundy rum."
“No wonder! You could’ve died! I’ve never seen anything like it.” She beamed. “You did a great job.”
“I think the magic just sort of did itself to be honest,” Soda protested.
“Soda your humility is admirable but you need to take ownership of your successes if you’re to get ahead in life." Her brief frown bounced back into a smile again. "The tear has utterly stabilised and no longer requires constant spell-casting to keep it contained. It’s not gone forever, but you’ve bought us more time to find the third Artefact. Goddess willing, we’ll find it in time for the equinox and we can deal with this once and for all.”
“Yes, that would be good…"
“Any ideas you want to share?”
Evangeline asked lightly, but Soda could see an intensity in her eyes that frightened her.
She shook her head. “No, just thinking about Lune and Somnus and the rest. They’re very old, I guess you asked them what they knew about the First Sorceress?”
“Ah yes, the Sevenkin. Even in our strange world, they’re an unusual family. None of them have any personal memories from before the Covenant, unfortunately.”
“Dang. That would be a bummer."
“I don’t know. The years start to weigh on you. I wouldn’t mind forgetting a few.” She looked tired for a few moments, but seemed to draw herself back up. She changed the subject, her tone upbeat again. “With the tear stabilised, supernatural phenomena should also stabilise. There’s a great deal of relief amongst the Enclave at the moment, and people are anxious to meet you, and discuss next steps.”
“What! Why?” Soda felt a pang of anxiety rattle through her addled brains. She could barely form a sentence, let alone meet a bunch more important people.
“You have access to ancient magic, of a kind the world hasn’t seen in a thousand years. The Enclave might say that the Covenant was an act of wisdom, but I think many long for the Shining Wars and mighty acts of Greater Magic.”
“Didn’t they nearly destroy the world though? I’m not doing any magic tricks, if that’s what you’re asking."
Evangeline laughed. “No, Goddess no. It’ll be more like a work function, except your colleagues are the worst people on Earth.”
“So just like a regular workplace then?”
“Pretty much, although I have to say the fashion is better. You’ll spot a wizard a mile off, they love to peacock!”
“Oh awesome, I love a good bit of chest hair and a gold chain.”
“Then you’ll be delighted. Now please excuse me, I have to run. I’ve organised an outfit for you, it’s in the closet of your room. You slept all day, so the reception starts in an hour. Someone will come get you. Ciao!”
She hung up.
Soda lurched her way to the small but richly decorated bathroom, where she found she could vomit after all. Nobody mentioned how much puking and fainting was involved in heroism. She faced the mirror reluctantly, expecting to see a swollen mess. She was shocked by her reflection. The swelling was all but gone, and the bruise had shrunk until it was under one eye. She prodded it experimentally and found it was still quite tender, but otherwise fine. Had someone done this to her while she was unconscious? Evangeline? Mwangi? She shivered involuntarily.
Bzzzzt-bzzz-bzzz.
“Oh! Was it you who fixed me up? Thanks!”
The Stone hummed again. She took it in her palm and lifted it closer. It glowed gently.
“Am I on the right track? This seems like the right thing to do, but it doesn’t feel like the right thing to do.”
It buzzed in response. Unclear.
“Am I doing ok?”
A reassuringly firm bzz-bzz and warm flash.
“Well, deeply cursed stone of doom, I’m trusting you on this. Despite my misgivings. I still don’t trust anybody else here though.”
An approving whirr. Right, that’s not confusing at all. But that was all she had. Keep going, keep watching, don’t trust anyone. Alright.
She went to the wardrobe and opened it, half-expecting it to break into song about the importance of good hospitality. Inside, she found a stocking on a hanger, with high heels. Where’s the rest of it? Brows furrowed, she pulled out a chic black silk dress, clearly cut to hug extremely close. She got undressed and pulled it over her head, wiggling and struggling and cursing at her tender body. Then she stuffed her feet into the heels, mercifully wedges, which were easier to navigate. She considered herself in the wardrobe mirror. The dress was low cut and clingy, and she felt unreasonably exposed and vulnerable. Far too much leg. Not the right undies at all. She didn’t wear dresses very often, and never ones like that.
She spun to search for her phone, so she could take absurd selfies and send them to Mick and Kitty to take the edge off. Then she remembered about her phone again.
"Fuck."
The only thing that made her happy was the black eye. She thought it looked sort of rakish and tough. It made her feel proud of her efforts, which was weird and new. Dangerous! Yeah. Evangeline was clearly communicating expectations with what she'd left in the room, and that included makeup - Lorenze brand of course. Eye shadow, blush, eye liner, mascara, lipstick, tiny brushes, big brushes, mysterious powders… Soda didn't really like makeup. She said it was about feminism, but if she was honest, it had always scared her a bit. She felt extremely at risk of getting it wrong and looking like a fucking clown. She could occasionally be coaxed into a bit of lipstick and mascara, so she gave that a go. On a whim, she chose a dark green lipstick. She was surprised and pleased to find it suited her brown hair. Bit of eyebrow stuff to even them out, bit of mascara… Not bad Jones, not bad. The woman’s face that looked back was tough, and maybe a little menacing. She liked that. Now, about the rest of the outfit…
Once she was dressed she had nothing to do, which was unbearable. She spent the next forty minutes spiralling from lack of screen distraction. She even tried to use the tablet on the bedside table to bring up an internet browser but it only offered her jazz and the weather, or to make a call. She thought about calling Mick, but she had no idea what his number was off the top of her head. Experimental jazz played while she slumped in an overstuffed chair, paced about, laid down on the bed face down, tried to remember some pilates stretches, longed for a spliff, and thought about her life choices. A sharp tapping knock took her totally by surprise even though she was waiting for it.
The young woman at the door was new. She was very pretty: tall with brown skin, big hair and green eyes, wearing a cream silk suit with matching bralet and sky high heels. Aside from being effortlessly fashionable, she looked strangely familiar.
“Bonjour Soda, I’m Virginie Mwangi, but you can call me Gigi.”
Mwangi! The resemblance to her father was undeniable. Her bright smile left Soda briefly dazzled. She looked Soda up and down and raised an eyebrow. “I thought I sent a dress?”
In the end, Soda couldn’t do it. She hated how exposed she felt, and didn’t feel enough like herself to face hostile new people. Her compromise was to stuff the dress into the combat pants, with the jacket open. She’d kept the heels and the lipstick. She stuck her chin out stubbornly.
“I didn’t like it.”
Gigi laughed.“This is actually so great. I love it. Mercenary chic. The heels work perfectly. Papa said we were the same height, so we have the same size shoe after all.”
“Oh, uh, thanks! For lending me your stuff.”
Was she blushing? Christ on a bike.
“It's nothing,” Gigi said with a flick of a manicured hand. “Now come, because the party has already started and we’re going to be fashionably late.”
She turned and strode off in exactly the same confident way as her father. Soda hurried after her, too. At least Gigi paused briefly to let Soda catch up.
“Papa tells me you didn’t know about any of this until five days ago, is this true?”
“God, is it only five days? It feels like five months.” Soda fought an urge to rub her face, awkwardly rubbing her head instead. Get it together.
“It certainly is a lot to take in all at once! And how much do you know about the people attending this evening’s reception?”
“Nothing. Enclave toffs. Maybe some of Evangeline’s crew.”
“Wall-to-wall musty toffs, and mind-blowingly weird creatures who are also somehow musty toffs.”
Soda chuckled weakly. “Honestly? I’ve given up all expectations of what might happen when I walk into any given room at this point. It’s been… a lot. My life was boring and normal before this.”
Gigi looked wistful. “I used to fantasise about being a normal girl, isn’t that silly? When I was younger I dreamed of living in a little narrow house in Hereford and walking to school in the morning.”
“Makes sense, though I would've disagreed two weeks ago.”
“Humans. Always wanting what we don’t have. What were you doing before this then, normal girl?”
“Ha, I was trying to be interesting and failing. Running arts coverage for a digital magazine.”
“Which one?”
“An Australian one, probably never heard of it. Reaxn.”
“Oh, yes I’ve heard of that!”
“Really?”
“No, sorry! Not at all." She laughed easily, and Soda laughed too.
“Working for a magazine seems glamorous to me. You didn’t like it?”
“Loved it actually, or I did at one point. Then it just became a shitty corporate job that sucked all the creativity out of me and killed my dreams. And then I got fired. By a guy who wears his suits two sizes too small.”
“Ooof! Brutal. But now you’re Soda Jones, Sorceress. Surely that’s an improvement?”
“D’you know, I would’ve thought so previously, but mostly I’m just really afraid all the time. Does that get easier?” Soda felt stupid and clumsy.
Gigi considered her for a long moment. “I don’t know many people who would admit that. But I think it’s true for them too. I think one of the costs of power is fear. It puts a target on you. That doesn’t go away. But you learn to manage it, or you don’t.” She shrugged.
Well, that was a very pragmatic viewpoint.
Soda changed the subject. “And you? You’re in the family business?”
“I was, but I got out.”
“Oh, how come?”
“Hard to be taken seriously when you’re less than two hundred years old in this place! Besides, I always wanted to work in fashion. So I ran away and went to fashion school. Then, because I’m stubborn, I refused to take any of Papa’s money and I worked in an atelier for seven years. I want to be good enough, not just rich enough.”
“That’s really cool. So you plan to bring out your own line of clothes?”
“I’m working on it, if I can get anybody to actually wear them!” She gave Soda a rueful look.
“Oh Christ, is the dress one of your designs? I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it, it’s just—”
“Soda it’s fine, I’m joking!”
“I’m a nervous wreck and you’re going to kill me."
“Nervous! Why would you be nervous? Everyone else is nervous."
“Because last week I was just an unemployed loser who couldn’t get a callback from the comms team at the tax department. And now I have to attend a party with a subset of the magic UN or whatever. Important scary people who all want something.”
“And what do you want?”
Soda frowned, suddenly aware of their surroundings again. Moving through the cavernous spaces of the manor made it feel like it might have strange dimensional properties. She wondered how much the tradies for building dimensionally expanded rooms were charging these days, then shook herself. Going crazier by the minute.
“I want,” she finally said, “in this order: number one, a joint to make Willie Nelson proud, number two, at least ten hours’ sleep in a row, number three, a bath in water up to my shoulders, number four, scrambled eggs with a pile of hash browns. The really crispy kind.”
Gigi gave a honking laugh of surprise. It was inelegant and charming. “Why are all the Australians I’ve ever met totally mad?”
“Dunno, must be the water?” Soda suddenly wanted to make Gigi laugh like that again.
But she was looking serious. “Do you want anything from the Enclave?”
Soda tried to be contemplative. “I want my friends to be safe. I want all of this to be over. I don't want to be blamed for things beyond my control.”
“Think about what you need. They’ll be looking to bargain with you. Make sure you extract maximum value from any offers. Don’t let them intimidate you. Do you know much about the First Sorceress?”
She looked intently at Soda's chest. Trying to go thirty seconds without blushing like a dickhead, she obliged, pulling out the Stone, letting Gigi marvel at it. She didn’t try to touch it, but there was something hungry in her gaze. Soda tried to be nonchalant about it but she was becoming quite protective of her strange companion. She closed her hand around it. Gigi blinked.
“I’m learning more about her. I do know she was fierce. And she stopped at nothing to get what she wanted.”
“Exactly! You need to bring that energy, alright? Bon courage!”
Soda was about to stuff the necklace back into her shirt, but she decided to let it hang freely. It was what everyone wanted to see, not her. It might distract them.
Gigi nodded approvingly. “Good start. Now I have a confession. I was supposed to brief you on the people you’ll be meeting this evening, but you were much more fun than I expected, so we’re halfway there and I’ve failed to tell you a single thing about any of them.”
“Not true,” Soda countered, trying to ignore the prickly feeling behind her ears. “You told me they were all musty old toffs. Are any of them… you know… any good?”
Gigi considered for a moment. “I would say, plenty of them have good intentions, but don’t know how to deliver. And the rest are malicious by design or ignorance.”
“Sounds like my old job.”
“Probably. Which is why you shouldn’t be intimidated. Now listen, I’ll talk quickly: the Enclave is vast and complicated, on purpose to keep everybody busy I think. There’s thousands of affiliate groups around the world that receive patronage from the bigger players. There are five hundred and twenty-eight representatives, which reduce in multiples of eight into more senior groups until there’s just the Council of Eight at the top. You’ll meet them. The Enclave also modernised in the 1940s and has a full-blown bureaucracy, so there’ll be various department heads. Probably someone from the University. The other most important faction will be the Otherworlds Diaspora. These are the representatives of all the non-humans left behind when the Covenant sealed the Otherworlds away from us. Well, not all of them. Many simply chose to sleep, wait out the pesky human problem. We’ve proven awfully tenacious, as it turns out.”
Soda marvelled at the thought of the mountain giants waking up from their nap to find us still here.
“Yeah I’d be mad. We’ve made a fuckin’ mess of things.”
“Right. And then there’s Evangeline and the Brigade.”
“Oh! I know a bit about these ones! Something like this: Evangeline and Rowan are hotheaded young lovers and activists, they start a vigilante group slash protest movement that turns into a genuine rebellion. There's a third one, Vincent. But he's super evil and murderous and gets caught planning unspecified terrorism. Bunch of people are executed and imprisoned. Rowan and Evangeline in disgrace. Rowan goes missing for ten years. Turns back up, fights with Evangeline, dead kids, ends up in prison too. Evangeline gets a deal, lays low for a while, then pops up as a celebrity adjacent beauty CEO. She's been building up the Brigade again in secret, and now she's done something crazy and illegal, which has torn a hole in reality.”
“Not bad Aussie, not bad! Vincent Loke was a terrorist who tried to blow up the Enclave with everyone still inside it.”
“Ah, classic move. He didn’t succeed?”
“No, and he and his followers were the last very public demonstration of the Enclave’s rage. Executed by firing squad, bodies summarily burned and spirits banished to the afterlife. But hey, this is important. You know Captain Esther Pereira?”
“Yeah, she did some training with me earlier. She’s… a tough lady, that’s for sure.”
“She’s one of them, a Lokite. She was the youngest member of the group, so she got a lighter sentence. Quietly made a life for herself afterwards working as a mercenary in Africa. Made her way back to the employment of Lorenze Beauty a few years ago.”
Soda’s eyebrows shot up. “But your dad seems to be all across this, since you’re telling me. No Brigade activity he wouldn’t know about, surely?”
“Papa’s been suspicious of the activity at the desert compound for a while. He thinks they’ve restarted the rebellion, and all of this is about taking down the Enclave.”
“Maybe she really does just want to reform it?"
“Don't they always? Papa asked me to warn you especially about Evangeline and Rowan. Both of them seem to be spiralling towards destruction, good intentions or not.”
“Ugh, why is that so true! Oh, I think we’re here.”
They were approaching a huge set of ornate doors with what seemed like a small battalion of guards outside. Standing in front was a vaguely familiar stocky man with a grey moustache and a rangy, hunted look about him. He was wearing black fatigues like Soda’s, augmented with silver plate armour. He should’ve looked like a Bond villain, but he was too tousled and harried. Soda realised she recognised him from her failed arrest at Lune’s. One of the cops, then.
“Captain Flintock, good evening,” said Gigi coolly.
“Ms Mwangi, you’re late. You can go inside. Ms Jones will be right behind you.” He had a thick Manchester accent, which was almost like a pleasing change after all the highborn posh talk.
Gigi looked like she was going to argue, then nodded curtly and strode off.
Flintock watched her go for a moment then turned back to Soda. “Thank you for your help today,” he said, putting his hand out stiffly.
Soda took it, and they shook one brief, firm shake then released just as stiffly. Soda had no idea what to make of this funny little man.
“I fear you’ve fallen in with bad sorts and may be on a path to ruin." He spoke in a low, hurried voice.
Her eyebrows shot up with surprise.
“But you’re in it now,” he continued determinedly, “so keep your wits about you. And have a good long think about what you’d like to put in your sworn statement you’re going to write out tomorrow. Do you know the location of the third Artefact?”
“No?”
“Why was you harbourin' the fugitive William Bosby?”
“I didn’t know I was, until five days ago!”
“Did you witness anythin' untoward in the company of Evangeline Lorenze?”
“I have no idea what you would consider untoward in these circumstances.”
“Illegal activity, Miss Jones.”
“Not yet, but I’ve only been here a minute. Maybe by tomorrow?”
“You think you’re funny.”
“I’m doing my best but I’m not sure what you want from me, Captain.”
He gave the Stone a troubled frown. It was a bit weird, everybody looking at her chest all the time.
“None of this makes any sense and I don’t believe for a moment that this is no longer an emergency. I disapprove of this reception on principle.”
Soda gave him her best politely blank face.
“You remind me of my daughter."
She softened a little. “What’s her name?”
“Tabitha. And I’d be right terrified of her bein' in your shoes. So be careful.”
“Thank you Captain. If there’s a fight, I’ll definitely be running in the other direction, so I’m with you there. I’ll help you with a sworn statement, but I have no idea what’s going on, so I don’t know how helpful it’ll actually be.”
“I’m sure you know plenty, you’re dead in the middle of all of this. We'll have a good long talk in the mornin'. Now off you go. Into the snakepit.”