Lyn Benedict - Sins & Shadows

“Focus,” Lilith said. “Keep moving.”

Sylvie almost gave up then and there, wanting just to spite Lilith and half-convinced it was too late for Alex anyway.

“Listen to me. Focus your will. Get it done.”

Sylvie bent back to the oubliette. Three-quarters around, and a tiny spark of something lanced upward, an electric tingle like touching a battery with wet hands. Then, a last knee-walk, sideways crab scuttle, and she closed the circle. The sting returned tenfold, ran up her arms in a jangling, nerve-strung firecracker series of tiny explosions. Her entire body felt sensitized, like she stood too close to a hot-wire-laced fence.

“ There you go,” Lilith said. “Do the signifiers next. Don’t lose focus. The world doesn’t like to bend. It’ll fight back.”

Sylvie bit her lip, needing to concentrate. That electric feel increased, and her thoughts felt fuzzed out. She traded the squeezed-out blue tube for the green one, and when her hand left the diagram, a vaporous trail traced her movement, luminous in the dimness.

“What does it feel like?” Lilith asked. “It’s always bothered me, that I lack that particular talent. It’s ridiculous how important power is. It trumps everything, and that’s not right. Look at Zeus, throwing petty fits just because his will was balked. Power shouldn’t go to idiots. Or to those who see life as a source for experiment. Power shouldn’t be used to prod and poke, deceive, blind, manipulate—but the gods reflect us, and we reflect them. Bound together in foolishness, venality, and greed.”

Sylvie concentrated on smearing the malachite green with fingers that felt bee-stung and raw, shivering as she traced the looping Greek letters that read love . The station felt as if it had warmed at least ten degrees. Sweat beaded on her scalp, on her cramping thighs, behind her knees. Somewhere, she could hear someone trying to start an engine that resisted, grinding as it stuck between gears. It annoyed her, made her head buzz. Her eyes itched and burned; the template of the oubliette blurred in her vision, and she echoed Lilith’s admonition to herself. Focus. You can do this. Never mind that she had never had a desire to touch magic. Distrusted it.

Tick, tick, her heartbeat said, pointing out that she no longer had the luxury of swearing off magic on principle. Too much depended on her successful use of it. Just this once. An exception to the rule.

Lilith said, “You’ve heard the truism a thousand times. Power corrupts. There are those who might wield it wisely, who would understand that power is best used sparingly. You understand. Don’t you burn to do better? To take the power from those frivolous hands and hold it safe in yours?”

“That’s you, seeing yourself mirrored in me,” Sylvie muttered. Getting better at this. Sweating bullets, but her focus was refining itself; it left her breath enough to argue. “I don’t want power over others, at least not magical power. It’s a burden.”

“I never said otherwise. But if it’s needed—If you know you could do what was needed. Someone has to do it; someone might as well be you. Or me, of course.” She grinned. “Preferably me.”

Sylvie scowled; Lilith just kept talking, and her voice was insidious, slipping in past Sylvie’s concentration, past the numb fuzziness of reality fighting her attempts to alter it. That engine sound wasn’t real at all, she thought, as it shifted to a Doppler pulsing in time with her heartbeat. It was reality slipping, earthquake fashion, along a fault, a basso continuo protest.

Lilith’s words were hard to ignore, trickling in like icy water on a rainy, winter day, snaking in beneath her collar, as relentless as a bore who held forth despite the blank, desperate expressions of his captive audience.

God, she thought, suddenly appalled. It’s in the blood. The laser focus, the obsessive stubbornness, the inability to shut the fuck up. She whimpered low in her throat, tuned her senses to the oubliette spell, trying to block Lilith out.

“—of it is, if left alone, mankind would settle itself out, like the animal kingdom. There is no sin in nature. There is, instead, equilibrium. But gods, they have to poke and prod, make rules and pick fights—tell me about wars, Sylvie. Can you think of one that didn’t have religion at its core?”

“It’s water torture,” Sylvie breathed. Or subliminal programming, she thought. Her fingers wavered; she forced her focus back on that machine-grinding, bone-humming, electric sensation of power coiling beneath her.

“The gods—”

“What about you?” Sylvie said, pausing for a moment as she came to the end of a curlicue she couldn’t interpret. Her breath came in gasps; her belly growled, and her knees felt like they might reverse themselves at any moment. The Fury’s borrowed power aside, the spell was eating through Sylvie’s own energy. The way things were going, even if she managed to open the oubliette, she’d be as weak as an infant, easily brushed aside. Sylvie fought to distract Lilith with the only means left to her. Words. “ You want power. You want to be worshipped.”

“Never,” Lilith said, her temper flaring in instant denial. “Worship’s where—Sylvie, watch out . You almost missed a spot.”

“Backseat spell casting?” Sylvie griped. It was more maddening that Lilith was right. She’d nearly skipped a tiny little symbol, and for all she knew, that could be a vital piece. It still burned that Lilith had spotted it before she did, when she was far enough across the room that she shouldn’t be able to see anything.

“It’s like perfect pitch,” Lilith said. “I can hear it, still can’t carry a tune. Be careful. Neither of us can afford a mistake. Where was I...? Worship is where things go wrong. Worship means you’ve stopped seeing people as independent beings, infantilized them permanently. I don’t want worship. I just want to make things right.”

“Run for Congress,” Sylvie said. “Hell, run for president.”

“Worthless,” Lilith said. “You aren’t listening. We reflect the gods. What happens with them, happens with us. The gods are corrupt, petty, despotic—so are their followers. The worst, though—”

“Let me guess,” Sylvie said. She gritted her teeth, pushed a last spurt of paint through the tube, stained the cement in a crimson swirl and shuddered as the entire diagram rang like a crystal goblet being struck. The tortured-machine hum smoothed out as reality bent and accepted its restructuring. Her bones vibrated to the new tune. “The whitebeard who booted you from Eden. Or should I call him Bluebeard.”

“You saw my work?” Lilith said. “You are dogged. Can you say I’m wrong? The similarities are striking. Bluebeard gave each successive wife a key and demanded that she not use it. And He put the Tree in the midst of our garden. They both demanded implicit trust but were not worthy of it. Neither of them ever considered that trust was a two-way street.”

Sylvie lifted her dizzy head and stared at Lilith. She panted, shivered, fought for breath. She felt cold and hot at once, as if the oubliette was a roaring fire in an arctic room. Everything she had learned only confirmed it for her: She loathed magic. All those sorcerers who did this kind of thing on purpose were morons.

When her breath had stabilized enough, when the buzzing in her limbs had faded, she said, “Does this really work for you? Talking people into submission? Did you just expect me to crumble and say of course you’re right?”

“No,” Lilith said. “I told you. I don’t want worshippers, or witless obedience. I want—”

“Anarchy,” Sylvie said. “Free will, free world, and you step in only if the whole shebang starts to go to hell. Lose your precious equilibrium.”