Magnus Flyte - City of Lost Dreams

Bettina pursed her lips. “Only recently did you come to my attention. We’ve been looking for the same things, though I suspect for different reasons. I hope you enjoyed all my little cards. You know, several times I almost called you and suggested we go have a nice chai latte at Starbucks and talk over the old days. We should be friends. And yet—”

Nico’s lip twisted in a sneer. “You cannot stoop so low. Nor can I. But . . . you found it?” The little man was trembling.

“Found what? I’ve found many things.”

Nico looked toward the palace, hopeful.

She opened the front door for them, a heavy wooden Renaissance-era door crisscrossed with iron. It slammed shut behind them with a heavy clunk.

They were standing now in a foyer between two of the points of the six-pointed star. The room was empty, except for a pile of boxes in one angle of the star, and lit with torches that cast shadows on the whitewashed walls and stone fireplace. In the flickering light, Sarah could see empty-eyed plaster masks staring down at them. Laughing, crying, staring, grimacing. The hair on the back of her neck went up, and the key between her breasts began to vibrate.

“Charming, isn’t it?” said Bettina. “Ferdinand did love his symbolism. Max, the folio?”

Max looked at Sarah. She nodded and looked away. She couldn’t look at Max.

She needed to hold on to her anger, stoke its fire, keep it at the boiling point. Anger was good. Anger fed action.

“I’ve read it,” said Nico as Bettina flipped through the papers. “The building is supposed to represent the cosmos and all that is contained within. All of the stucco work has alchemical parallels. Heroism, transmutation, incest, the chemical wedding. If the Fleece is here, it must be buried. Unless you already have it—?”

Bettina laughed. “Is that what you’re after?”

“Fuck the Fleece,” Sarah shouted. “I want Pollina back.”

“Don’t fight her.” Harriet in all her finery slunk against a wall. “She is Elizabeth Weston. You should do as she says.”

“Fuck the Fleece indeed,” said Elizabeth. “I stopped looking for that a long time ago.”

“Then what do you want?” Nico came forward and stared up at Elizabeth.

“To be reunited with my daughter,” said Elizabeth.

“Oh, I remember,” said Nico. “Which one do you want? The dribbler? Or the spitter? Or the cougher?”

With one hand Elizabeth grabbed Nico by the hair and threw him across the room. Before Sarah could even react, Max had Elizabeth by the throat.

“You may be immortal,” snarled Max, holding the butt of his gun to her head, “but I will club you like a carp if you touch my friends.”

“A Lobkowicz with something in his codpiece,” said Elizabeth. “Polyxena would be proud. Let me go. Remember your little Pols.” Max released her. Nico started to stand, and then sat down, heavily, his head in his hands.

“You want to die?” asked Sarah. She very much needed not to look at Nico right now. “And be with your daughter? Because I can send you to her. We don’t need a portal. I have the antidote. I’ll give it to you after you give me Pols.”

She produced the vial from her pocket. Elizabeth stared at it.

“I have no idea what that is,” she laughed. “But I don’t care. Even if it is the antidote, I don’t need it. I don’t want to die.”

“You can’t want to live,” Nico whispered. “Not anymore. This is a curse.”

“You idiot,” Elizabeth spat. “A curse? You have done nothing with your time if you can’t think of anything better than dying. Ah, but your perspective is so small, isn’t it? Four hundred years and a dwarf is still small. But woman? Woman has risen! Woman will continue to rise! I want my DAUGHTER. She will live forever by my side. Together we will live to see the end of man. And now I have a way to bring Portia to me. That’s what I have been working for, all these years. I will bring her back. I will cure her sickness. And then, when her body is healthy and strong and pure, I will bind her telomeres with gold. And we will never be parted again.”

“It is impossible.” Sarah’s mind was spinning.

“You understand, Sarah,” said Elizabeth softly. “I know you do. The anguish at not being able to save the one you love? In that we are the same, we Weston women, aren’t we?”

“Don’t,” said Sarah. “Don’t try to girl bond with me. And how do you think Portia is going to be returned to you?”

Elizabeth spread her arms wide.

“You are going to take a dose of a time-perception drug, which a little bird tells me Tycho named after me. You will find Portia, and you will bring her with you through the portal. This can be done. I’ve been practicing.” Elizabeth turned to Max. “You can vouch for that.”

“Saint John,” Max said. “Jan Kubiš. You brought them through. How?”

“Time,” Elizabeth laughed. “Time brought me the answer. Time is the answer. The last century taught me that. Einstein taught us all that space-time can be bent by the presence of an enormously huge mass. Which is what a hell portal is, of course. A pocket of dark matter. But I needed the precise measurements of this power and how to manage it, which has taken practice. Another century. And I needed a portal here in Prague, near where Portia was. Not having a convenient key like mademoiselle here, I had to use a fair bit of alchemy to open the portals. I thought I had found all of them, until Harriet described the markings on the folio. Philippine bound this place very thoroughly with her spells so we must do things the old-fashioned way to find where the portal is hidden. And then I need you, Sarah, to open the door and be Portia’s guide. According to Harriet, you’re quite the little time-walker.”

They were all, Sarah realized, looking at her now.

“I don’t have any Westonia,” she said. “I took the last of it in Innsbruck.”

“Oh, Harriet will share. She’s not much good on it herself.”

Sarah looked at the wasted figure of Harriet.

“You really did find the antidote?” Nico was at her side now. “That’s the ‘something’ that you found at the castle?”

“I broke the Westonia in half,” Sarah confessed. “I took one half in the lab and the other at the castle. And I saw Philippine. I . . . I was her, I think. For a few minutes. She had made the elixir for immortality. And the antidote. She gave it to me. I can’t really explain how it happened.”

“Interesting,” said Nico. “Especially since I have the other half of Westonia right here.”

He produced a half pill from his pocket.

“But,” she insisted, “I hid the Westonia in my pocket.”

“And I stole it, and replaced it with half an Altoid.”

“Then who . . . what? I saw everything. Ferdinand. And Philippine. I saw Mozart , and . . .”

Elizabeth and Nico exchanged a look.

“Placebo effect,” said Elizabeth. “She doesn’t need the drug.”

Nico nodded. “She has the gift. I did wonder.”

“Me, too, at the ball,” said Elizabeth. “Scared the hell out of me. She has it.”

“I have what?” demanded Sarah. “What happened to me?”

“My dearest one,” said Nico, “It seems you never really needed the drug, after that first time. You only needed to think you had taken the drug. You’re highly sensitive to energy fluctuations, to put it mildly. Sherbatsky suspected this, I think.”

“So unfair ,” said Harriet. “She doesn’t even care about history.”

“You’re saying I . . . But all the physical sensations . . . the sickness.”

“I didn’t say it was an easy thing. Perhaps you will get better at it.”