Page 117 of Middlegame

When she lowers her hands, Roger and Dodger are staring at her. She smirks, shrugs.

“He’s going to know sooner or later. This is better than skulking around the place, running into all his old experiments.” Erin’s face darkens. “There are things here you should never have to see. That I should never have seen. Consider yourselves lucky that you won’t have to.”

“But they should have,” says a new voice, a man’s voice, calm and level as any professor. That’s what he sounds like: a teacher, someone to be trusted without question. The sort of man who would grade fairly on the curve, who would take the time to clearly explain the material and make sure the entire class is on the same page.

Roger and Dodger turn. Erin doesn’t. She’s seen James Reed before. She has no need to see him now.

He’s tall, as has always been the fashion for men with voices like his, in positions like this one. Baker was a performer, after all. She knew the importance of things like height, like looking the part. So Reed is tall, and Reed is handsome, with a smile that would have made parents worry about the virtue of their daughters when he was younger, when the world was simpler, when virtue was considered something to be lost. His hair is the color of desert sand, and his eyes are like a viper’s, bright as jewels, constantly calculating.

He is smiling, and both of them are wise enough to see the danger there, and neither of them knows how to turn it aside.

“I saw what you did, you know,” he says conversationally, walking closer, like a man out for an evening stroll. “I think every alchemist in the world probably saw. You painted the sky like a canvas, and wasn’t it a lovely shade of gold? Which one of you figured out what to do, by the by? My little cuckoo-children, sent into the world to fend for yourselves. I always knew you’d fly back to the nest. Back to me.”

Dodger’s hand tightens on Roger’s, grinding their fingers together until it hurts. “I didn’t fend for myself,” she says. “I had parents. Heather and Peter Cheswich. You had them killed.”

“Don’t take that tone with me, Dodger; if you had a father in this world, it was me, and little girls shouldn’t speak so to their fathers.” The mask slips. Only for a moment, but long enough for them to see through into the chasm on the other side. He’s dangerous, this jovial humbug of a man, and he’ll kill them if he can. Then the mask snaps back into place, and he says, “I didn’t have them killed, Leigh chose to kill them. There’s a difference there, if you feel like having a productive conversation. I can’t control who my subordinates choose to kill. Why, if I could, you wouldn’t have dropped three of my best people into the ocean just because you were having a bit of a sulk.”

“They were trying to kill us,” says Roger.

“I’m not one of your people,” says Erin.

“Saying you were one of my best wasn’t enough for you?” Reed clucks his tongue. “Kids these days. But you’re not the matter at hand, are you? No, no. Not at all.” He shifts his focus back to Roger and Dodger, continuing to walk toward them. “You could have been perfect. You still could be. Hand me your reins. Let me bind you to my service, be my children, let me love you, and I will let you live.”

“No,” says Roger. “We’re not here to work for you. We’re not tools.”

“Oh, but you are, Roger. You always have been. I am a master craftsman, and you’re very much your father’s son.” Reed shakes his head. “If you’re not here to work for me, I assume you’re here to return what you’ve stolen from me. That’s awfully good of you, all things considered.”

“We don’t have anything of yours,” says Dodger.

Roger says nothing, but he tugs her back, making sure their shoulders are aligned, that there’s no way for them to be separated without seeing it coming. She’s the better liar. The flipside is that he’s better at telling truth from lies, at least when he hears them coming from other people. He knows what Reed wants.

“We can’t surrender the Doctrine,” he says. “We are the Doctrine. The only way we could let it go is to . . .”

Roger stops as Reed begins smiling the slow, vicious smile of a man who believes he holds all the cards.

“That’s right,” he says. “You’re going to have to die. I’d apologize, but well. You must have seen it coming.”

Dodger laughs.

All the others turn to look at her. Erin is annoyed; Reed bewildered; Roger amused.

“Oh, man, really?” she asks. “We, like, walk in here as the living embodiment of a cosmic force you felt the need to pin down and incarnate, and you think you can just waltz up and kill us? How were you planning to do that?”

“By distracting you,” he purrs.

Leigh drops the Hand of Glory, appearing out of nowhere. The metal rebar in her other hand is long enough to catch them both in the back of the head at the same time. They are still flesh; they are still mortal. They fall. Erin snarls, reaching for the gun in her belt, and stops as the barrel of someone else’s gun is pressed against the base of her skull.

“Please don’t make me,” whispers a young female voice, green as grass, as springtime, as any usurper’s daughter looking at a throne she doesn’t want and never asked for. Erin goes very still. The other math child, the chosen contender for Dodger’s place.

“As you can see, my dear, cosmic power doesn’t make a person clever. It just makes them sloppy. Never count a construct out until you’ve seen the body.” Reed steps daintily over Dodger, kneeling next to Roger. “He has my chin . . . Thank you, Erin, for delivering them to me. Now’s where you try to convince us you’re still loyal. We won’t believe you, of course, but it might be fun to hear what you have to say.”

“I betrayed you both,” says Erin. “What you’re doing, what you’re trying to do—it’s wrong. I won’t be a killer for you anymore.”

“The little girl behind you has no such compunctions.”

The nameless girl makes a small whimpering sound. Erin thinks, but does not say, that she has plenty of compunctions. She just has too much to lose to give them voice.

Leigh drops her rebar with a clatter. Erin’s eyes flick to her.