Author's Note: Thanks, as usual, to the wonderful inspiration that is Ivycreeper's reviews. And also many, many thanks to Simply Myself who pointed out that I'd uploaded this all centered.
Sewing Sheets
"'It was discovered by a Muscovite – stop me if you know this already –' a middle-aged man was saying, as the young woman gazed at him in admiration – 'a man called Rusakov, and they're usually called Rusakov Particles after him. Elementary particles that don't interact in any way with others – very hard to detect, but the extraordinary thing is that they seem to be attracted to human beings.'"
- From Northern Lights, by Philip Pullman, (on Dust).
It was moving far too fast and violently to be composed of happy particles of ten-thousand-year-old magic. --
And Artemis laughed.
The magic paused, swarming like bees to be closer to the half-cracking laugh, not well used, the product of a braking voice. And it was a swarm of bees, possessing a hive mind that agreed collectively where they were all to go, what they were all going to do. It was fascinating. And they were trying to return to the Hive, but they had been locked out. Or, rather, locked in. And they were rather annoyed about this state of things, even though the obstruction was now removed, replaced, of course, by sandstone, mortar, glass and thick tapestries.
"There's iron in the alloy of that box, Butler. Right?" Artemis's voice contained caution, but calm understanding - a regular state of existence for him - squashed any internal conflicts quite easily.
"Artemis?" Asked Butler, who was regarding the magic with the special state of mind and action that all Butlers moved in instinctively as soon as their charge was in a possibly threatening position.
"The oldest of the myths. The fairy folk, the lords and ladies; the only thing which was a source of pain for them, or for anyone or thing from their realms, was iron, which is why horseshoes were nailed over doorframes and used for luck in more suspicious times."
"Ah." It was barely more than a breath, and still they stood, Artemis wondering what he might be able to do, the others involved in undefined internal conflicts between fear and awe.
The magic wasn't focused on Artemis anymore, and no one else was moving, although there was something about the dance of faux darkness through the air of the well-lit Library that drew a viewer in, that fascinated anyone, that created the strongest urge to touch, to hold, to possess and be possessed. It, the El'veis draíocht, was skimming over wooden surfaces once more, examining the not-quite tasteful rug over one section of the floorboards. Seeping through the gaps between cornices and ceiling, through tiny gaps by the lightswitches, which caused a surge of energy that short-circuited the system, cutting the electrical lights, until the room was in almost complete darkness, the only light coming from a few large windows through which the rays from the setting full-moon were shining. The particles moved through the rays like they were drugged, like the moonlight was a drug; like a young woman driving past a favourite shop which has new merchandise in the window – slowly, observing, envying.
Some particles, after moving through the moonlight and being pushed out by their fellows, made their way over to the still humans and elf, who were still perhaps from unchecked wonder rather than oppressive fear. The magic moved around them, curious about the humans – a group moving close to the visible vein underneath the thin skin of Artemis's inner wrist, but the iron of his blood was too close and they jumped back as though electrocuted, before one moved forward once more cautiously, addicted to danger as, it seemed, not only humans and the People would always be, but also elementary particles of ancient magic.
The particles lingered around the Commander, though, for far longer, keeping a distance apart as if respecting parameters already set, rules which the fairies had forgotten in the thousands of years since… whenever whatever it was had happened. Of course, these things can only be just understood by someone of a rather odd disposition, for who can imagine particles that weighted almost nothing to be conscious? But they were.
Then there was a change in the patterns of the El'veis draíocht, which had until that moment been calming, reducing in intensity from when Artemis had first opened the box. The girls, comatose on the single beds in the center of the Library, had been discovered.
The magic swarmed once more with a single specific purpose, congregating over the two small forms amongst white sheets. Apparently the rules that had forbidden the magic from touching the Commander was not the same rules relating to Holly and Jac.
Before Butler could move more than a few steps from Artemis's shoulder, most of the particles had disappeared into the girls.
And for the first time in days Jac moved of her own volition, her head twisting slightly to the side, eyebrows furrowed, a small gasp escaping.
Holly moved as well, but it was a bit more pronounced, since it involved the morphing of her features from barely adult, to child, to ancient, eye sockets deepening to dark hollows. Then back again, to where she was approximately meant to be. She breathed in, a great gasping breath, and sat up poker-straight in the bed, something clicking with great force in her neck or back. Her eyes were forced open, whites showing, but they were focusing on nothing more than something far beyond reality.
She started to fall backwards onto the bed, and Butler caught her and lowered her more gently. He saw a wisp of the frightening magic leak out from the corner of her mouth.
The magic had found a crack in the plaster behind a bookshelf though, and it led down into the foundations and Irish stone below. Within half a minute all of the El'veis draíocht had disappeared.
"Did I just open Pandora's box?" asked Artemis.
It was the Underground equivalent of late afternoon, as much as time ever had to matter under the earth, anyway. Willow woke up, shook off the remains of depression-induced hangover and promptly blocked herself away from the world, again.
She saw Basil on the way to the bathroom, he was sitting on the couch he'd slept on the day before, and since he hadn't had a reasonable day's sleep in months, and definitely not since the E1 attack and his disappearance, he had slept for almost 13 hours in a state of exhaustion before the nightmares had had enough energy to disturb his sleep. He hadn't tried to go back to sleep afterwards; at least the bags under his eyes were not so noticeable as they had been and magic was able to fix everything else really.
He was reading the paper. Cringing, but also reaffirming what he needed to do.
Willow came back from a well-needed shower. She'd dressed in a sober maroon turtleneck and black trousers, normalicy was evident. So much so, in fact, that it proved that she wasn't coping at all, she was trying to prove the world sane, and it had never been sane. She ignored Basil's presence and made herself some toast.
Basil put down the paper carefully, his face still curled in an expression of horrid sickness after reading the many articles about the AAA, having cringed every time he was able to mentally affirm or disprove one of the statements within it. He wished he knew nothing, but burying his head in the sand and doing nothing was not an option.
"Willow?" He asked, moving into the kitchen. Not afraid that perhaps she'd throw the boiling kettle at him, but he wouldn't really have been surprised if that had happened.
She didn't throw anything at him. She didn't even give him a 'hmm' of acknowledgement. She brushed past him on the way to the fridge to get some cheese, and at least the fact that he'd felt the heat of her arm meant that Basil could be sure that he hadn't actually died in the attack and was now a ghost who only thought himself alive.
"Willow," he said, with more emphasis, not nearly as passive as before. "Willow, look at me."
She turned, there were unshed tears sparkling in her eyes. She was… implacable. She didn't even know what she was feeling, what point she was trying to make anymore. "What do you want me to do, Basil? Why on Earth did you have to find me and tell me and ruin me yet again? Why did you tell me about Quentin and the AAA and William? There's nothing I can do to help you. Nothing. It's without purpose. Why didn't you just go to the LEP and be done with it? It doesn't have anything to do with me. So what if my best friend was doing something for Quentin, it was only because of you. So what if my brother is… doing whatever it is, he's a grown elf, he can handle himself, I'm sure."
"I… I don't know why I came here, Willow. I felt that I had to. I could just stroll up to Police Plaza and incriminate dozens of People and there's a chance that…" Basil took a breath, and one step closer to Willow, who was on the other side of a small tiled bench. Willow took one step backwards. "William is doing illegal things. And these things won't just get him a slap on the wrist. He's been trying to create biological weapons. And he couldn't have done it by himself. He couldn't have. And no one Underground would do it without blackmail; you know all the people who'd possibly be able to do this, Willow, the biochemists. Would any of those do something like this for gold, for fame, for power? Seriously? Because I don't think they would. You all dedicate their lives to discovering peace, motivating life to go on further. I think you know what I'm saying. He must have gotten help from Mud Men, and in that case it's life imprisonment."
"What about Cy? Cy wouldn't have done it either. Why did he do it?" Her voice was quiet, barely above a scared whisper.
"Because of me." Basil drew a short breath in through his nose, holding the air in his lungs before letting it out as his ran a hand over his shaved scalp. "They used me as 'encouragement', blackmailing him into creating the bioweapons for them. I told Cy to not do anything, that it wasn't worth it. But he did it anyway."
Willow bit her lip. "He really loved you. Enough to do that…"
"He was selfish. He shouldn't have done it. He was willing to kill however many thousands instead of letting the AAA do their worst to me. It was a selfish act. And stupid. For who was going to say whether or not I was going to be one of the thousands killed?" Basil paused, a pause of gathering personal strength rather than one of strategy. "…And then, of course, it ended up killing him."
"But he still loved you, Basil!"
"Well, I think William's following in Cy's footsteps because he loves you enough to do stupid things."
"What are we going to do, though?"
"Well, I'm going to Police Plaza, I think. I need to help them as much as a can. Even if the deepest circle of hell is reserved for betrayers and mutineers."
"What's hell?"
"Another Mud Man invention. A place where you go when you die if you lived a horrible life. A place of flame and demons and where you can never forget your past because your mistakes are beaten into you day after day, if there were such things as days. And there can't be days, because there aren't rest times; when there is no night, how can you distinguish a day?"
Willow looked away from him, towards a drab print upon the far wall. "Do you suppose Cypress is there?"
"I don't know. I don't want to think about it. If he is, I'm planning on joining him. It shouldn't be that hard. …And I can't imagine that it'll be very long until I am there."
The next newspaper headline, in the first paper of the night, was too horrible to swear at, all Trouble could do was reread it, dumbfounded that such a thing had managed to make it into print. He plucked a copy from the stand and dropped a few coins into the stallholder's palm without meeting the elf/sprite hybrid's eyes.
He was scared to read it, but the morbid fascination that always accompanies items of doom drew him to open the tabloid spread before even making it home to his apartment (where he'd been ordered to return to for a few hours by Vein, even though he was superior to him, but Vien had judged him unfit for duty, and that his scent of dried sweat was too strong for fairy contact).
The article's title wasn't exactly fit for publication either.
"
Acting Commander Kelp Seen at AAA Meeting
There is photographic evidence linking Acting Commander Kelp, infamous for choosing 'Trouble' at his naming ceremony 87 years ago, an age when he couldn't blame such judgment on Marylin Manson's influence, to a recent meeting of the Anti-Atlantis Association. It is believed that Kelp has been an Associative for over thirty years, ever since an unfortunate incident in which an Atlantean insulted him. The question we have to be asking ourselves is whether or not we are prepared to put the fate of our city into the hands of the enemy?
It is rumoured that Lady Shesh-hin, the Atlantean representative on the Council, recently returned to Atlantis due to explicit intimidation from Kelp himself, not for the internal political reasons which she used as her excuse to leave Haven. Such extents should not be tolerated, but who can stop the police? Is anyone going to even try?
Is Haven truly a multi-specieal society? Atlantean, Gnome, all non-elf based species have been leaving our fair city in drones, no longer feeling safe to walk the streets many were brought up on. And who should be protecting the streets? The LEP, the largest units of which are all based out of this city, as well as the majority of Above Ground operations being implemented from behind the closed doors of Police Plaza.
Not three weeks ago the citizens of Haven were witness to the weaknesses of the LEP. Not only in their weaponry, which relied on the good will of a single pixie, nor only their fighting techniques, which relied on aforementioned weaponry. But also the unstable forces at work within the ranks. The Regional Commander regularly disappears, and it is known from our sources, who have asked to remain unnamed, that no one within the Plaza or outside of it know where Commander Root so often disappears to. Apparently Root was missing for an entire 17 days only a few months ago, but the incident was not reported to the media or the public.
Is our political and governmental system worthy of the accolades said in their name? Or is Chairman Cahartez and his cronies as outdated as the Frond Dynasty?
But the power of Haven does not even lie in the hands of the Council; it lies in what must be called the Underground militia. The LEP, the organization that not only polices our streets, arresting drunkards for disturbing the peace, but also contains the Judicial system, health and welfare committees and the management of the education department. Our city is run by the police, a group of people who have faith in weaponry, not the Book.
And the LEP is run by a man with no self-discipline or courage, who flees the city at the first sign of trouble. Or, alternatively, by an elf as bigoted as the people who have destroyed our way of life through their act of terrorism.
Too much of the power of Haven lies in the hands of too few, and those few do not always appear to have been the best choices for Command.
Yes, Trouble is definitely in charge of our city. But what are we going to do about it?"
Trouble hadn't eaten breakfast that evening but he was sure that as soon as he had he would feel sick in the stomach.
He arrived at his apartment, dropped his keys and helmet beside the door, kicked his shoes off and moved straight towards the shower, forgoing the kitchen completely, because the vomiting wasn't a good idea. He showered (admitting to himself that Vein had been quite correct), and dressed in a new uniform before moving towards the kitchen to make himself a nutritional shake then a strong cup of coffee. He wouldn't be able to sleep on a cloud after that article, and he needed to get back to the Plaza ASAP to… well, there wasn't really all that much they could do other than a direct denial, which wasn't ever a good tactic. Hopefully none of the papers had tried to get some correspondence from the people Root was supposedly with, although, judging from the collective lucks of Trouble, Haven, and the LEP at this moment, someone probably had.
Trouble would survive without any real sleep; he'd managed to catch a few moments rest on one of the benches that were scattered around the Plaza for precisely that purpose. Rumour had it that Root had a bench all to himself someplace, but thinking that he just yelled at whoever was utilizing it until they scattered was probably more accurate.
Root would be back down in Haven soon enough, and then Trouble would be able to go back to worrying from his usual less prominent position where he didn't actually have to make any important decisions regarding the subjects of the worry, and where no one really gave a damn what he did or didn't do, short of actual murder.
That was a comforting thought, in a cowardly sort of way.
It was not a comforting situation to walk into your own small, little-used kitchen and find a naked Kry-rae High Priestess sitting comfortably on a stool, a length of white material across her lap that she was sewing together.
"Ah, Kelp," said Vinyáya without looking up from her sewing; Trouble's pair of kitchen scissors used to snip the tops off soups and shakes that came as powders in foil packets were on the table in front of her. "Hope you don't mind, but I borrowed a sheet of yours."
"I don't mind. Uh…"
"I was in one of those situations you just have to get out of quickly, even if you are starkers. I'm sure you understand that, Kelp." She finished the sewing with a few quick stitches, stood up, shaking out the material – one of a pair of white sheets Trouble had gotten as a house warming present from a partially-senile Aunt – and looking at it with a critical eye. She pulled the makeshift gown over her head, plucked a hair from her head and tied that around her waist to pull the sheet together just above her hips.
There were quite a few questions that were clamouring to be asked first, but he'd never really been in the situation he was in now. He knew nothing more about the etiquette attached to female acquaintances turning up naked in his apartment than what he'd seen in movies, or in rather uninventive wet dreams. The question that arrived at his lips first was what seemed to be the most unimportant one, as these things go in real life.
"Where did you get a needle from?"
Vinyáya smiled at him, then pushed the needle back into an elaborate clip that held back most of her waist-length dark hair.
"How much explanation do you need before you'll let me help you, Kelp? Because you do need help. A lot of it, probably."
"As much explanation as is relevant to me or the continued safety of Haven. Although, the term 'continued safety' implies that it's in any way safe right now. Have you read the paper?"
"Yes. The source—"
"One of the Council?"
"Yes."
"Thought it might have been. Some of the stuff recently has been too accurate. Cahartez?"
"Don't be silly, he's far too stupid. Joesph is the one. Lord Peat. He wants the government to be remodeled; it would be of great benefit to himself. He's got the Dwarfish instinct for grasping at gold, he's just decided to grasp at the most slippery, satisfying and stylish form of gold there is: politics. And he's not above stealing, of course. But you have to be ruthless in this world of ours."
"Your sympathies?"
"Towards peace."
"Any other specifications, Ma'am, or is it a free-for-all type of arrangement?"
"Not many specifications, I admit."
"Loyalties?"
"My People; then the People." Trouble raised an eyebrow, a query that had nothing really to do with trust. "I'm a diplomat, Kelp, I'm meant to put the Kry'rae before anything else."
Trouble nodded, because although he felt no specific loyalty towards elves as a whole, he had no need for that; he understood the idea of minorities at least. And followed politics. It was quite certain that truly Vinyáya felt first for herself, then the Kry'rae, then the People, but that was to be expected. No one was selfless, least of all a politician.
But most politicians at least started out with good intentions.
Trouble looked her up and down, the sheet-gown looking amazingly flattering on her frame, which was surprising, considering how he remembered the incident when it had been used to mop up Grub's vomit when multiple people had spiked the fruit punch at a Beltane party. Vinyáya was slightly shorter than himself, but he was tall for an elf, for any fairy; her eyes were as dark as her hair, hiding her emotions and motivations - the dilations of the pupils would be almost impossible to detect; her ears were pointed, of course, and her skin was tinged with a Kry'rii's dusting of dusky blue, highlighting her cheeks like makeup. She was dangerous, ruthless, predictable only in someone being able to know she would always be unpredictable. He could see why she would be made a High Priestess; she looked powerful, impressive, as if you could worship her instead of whatever she was proclaiming. He could also see why she'd been moved to politics, as no Church really wants someone like her in their ranks. She would make anyone uneasy after five minutes.
She smiled at him, her eyes twinkling at his - in reality – amateurish scrutiny.
"Where are we going, Ma'am?"
"Somewhere interesting, Kelp."
"I'll get my helmet then."