All That Lives Must Die (3 page)

They glanced back at the map. Chestnut and Lombard were only a few blocks away.

“Only a fifteen-minute walk,” Eliot said.

“I can see that,” Fiona replied.

Something was wrong about this. She ran her fingertips over the map. The rough cotton fibers had a texture that felt like woven canvas. It made her skin itch.

Of course
there was something wrong. You’d have thought they might for once treat her and Eliot like adults. Instead of outgrowing their household rules, though, they still had 104 old rules
plus
new League edicts to follow (along with some veiled threats if they failed)
and
a bunch of Paxington regulations to worry about.

Audrey stood and told them, “You must be on your way. Now. You will require every minute.” Her face was unreadable.

Cecilia then emerged from the kitchen, a paper lunch sack in either hand. To Fiona’s utter embarrassment, their names had been written on the outside as if they were little kids.

Cee shook the bags. “Special lunches today,” she said, and smiled, “for my special darlings.” She gave one to Fiona and then Eliot, and hugged them both. “You’ll do fine today.” Her face darkened, and she whispered, “Remember to work with each other. You’re far stronger together.” Cecilia stood back and beamed at them. “Their first day of—”

“Which will be their last,” Audrey told her, “if they delay.”

“Oh, yes, silly me.” Cecilia backed away.

“Thanks, Cee,” Fiona said.

“Thanks,” Eliot said.

She and Eliot moved to Audrey and gave her a kiss on the cheek. To Fiona, this felt like one of her morning chores, like brushing her teeth or taking out the trash.

Eliot ran down the hall.

Fiona sprinted after him and got ahead, tramping down the spiral staircase first, and halted at the front door. “Too slow again,” she told him.

The front door was redwood and had four stained glass windows depicting a rose-hedge maze, a meander of river, a field of grapevines and harvesters, and a coastline with churning waves. A million colors sparkled on the tiled floor.
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Fiona loved this door and paused to admire it.

“We’d better go,” Eliot whispered. “There’s something weird about this Paxington map deal.”

“I know,” Fiona said. “I feel it, too.”

She glanced back up the stairwell, hoping to see Audrey looking down, maybe with the tiniest farewell wave.

But her mother wasn’t there . . . only shadows.

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. The Door of Four Paths and the Post residence were some of the few structures to miraculously survive the devastation that flattened the San Francisco peninsula in the War of Last Judgment. The four windows depict (or some claim are) doorways to the Middle Realms. This artifact from the Fifth Celestial Age continues to undergo intense and cautious study. For humanity, these windows remain symbols of mystery, wonder, and hope.
Gods of the First and Twenty-first Century, Volume 11, The Post Family Mythology.
Zypheron Press Ltd., Eighth Edition.

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CIRCLES OF POWER AND REGRET

Audrey watched from the second-story window as the children walked down the street. They paused at the intersection and looked both ways before crossing. She reached up and touched the glass.

Always so careful. Good for them. The world was a dangerous place, and it was wise to look before one leaped. But sometimes being cautious was bad. Wait too long to cross the road, and one might be hit from behind by a bus careening out of control down the sidewalk.

She withdrew her hand, returned to the dining table, and sat.

“We must talk,” Cecilia whispered to her. “The children—”

Audrey held up one finger. “Tea first, Cecilia. And bring the Towers game. I fear the time will crawl today without some distraction.”

Cecilia obediently nodded and backed into the kitchen.

Boiling water for tea. The old woman hopefully could manage that.

Audrey nibbled on a piece of curled burnt bacon and reminded herself to make a list of all the restaurants nearby that delivered breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There was no need anymore to pretend they did not have the money for such “luxuries” as edible food.

Cecilia returned with a tea service tray and a rolled-up piece of leather.

Indeed, there was no need anymore to pretend
many
things.

Cecilia smiled nervously. “You have that look on your face”—she poured hot water into a teapot with spiderweb patterns etched into its white glaze—“the look where people go missing.”

Odors of chamomile, mint, and mandrake wafted across the table.

“I was just thinking that there are advantages to having some things cut.” Audrey sighed. “Set up the game and ask no more foolish questions.”

Cecilia paled. She unrolled the leather mat upon the table and then removed the game cubes from their pouch.

Long ago, Audrey had had to sever herself from a collection of feelings and instincts that some might call motherhood. She’d left only one connection: the instinct to protect.

Did she still love her children? Was there some vestige of a desire to give them the best of everything? Where was the urge to hold them and soothe away their fears when they had nightmares? Or were these things forever lost to her?

It had to be that way, though. Otherwise, she would not have had the strength to do what was best for them all.

Audrey shifted her focus to the game. It was a study on the forms of combat, on strategies and death, a metaphor on the families and their never-ending politics. They called the game Towers.
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Audrey smoothed the rumpled leather mat and ran her fingers over the lines that radiated from the center, around the circles that divided the space into four tiers. Slaves (or their modern equivalent, Pawns) sat on the outer edge. Warriors took the second tier. Princes collected near the nexus of power on the third tier. The Master sat in the center space. Rings about rings. Rings of power and love and deception and regret.

She and Cecilia divided the stone cubes and took alternating turns, selecting their starting positions along their respective inner areas.

Much of the game was decided by this deceptively simple planning stage. Good players could tell how their game would end from such opening moves. One could set up near an opponent’s boundary, preparing for an aggressive rush. Or they could set up in the back regions and strategize to take the center—a longer game of dominance and subtlety.

Like the twins. How things went today at school would very much affect their endgame.

Cecilia set up on Audrey’s boundary. In response, Audrey placed only a few weak defenders to counter her and concentrated her efforts on the longer back-region game.

Cee immediately took one of Audrey’s border guards. “I am worried about their father,” she said, a smug smile appearing on her face as she removed Audrey’s piece.

“There has been no word from him,” Audrey replied.

“Exactly!” Cee said. “It can mean only one thing: He’s plotting something.”

Audrey’s answer to this obvious statement was silence.

She countered Cecilia’s move by advancing a stone from her first circle to the second, blocking Cee’s clumsy advance.

“We should tell the children,” Cecilia said. “Tell them everything.” She poured Audrey and herself cups of tea. Steam curled around the old woman like living tendrils. “We should prepare them for the coming violence.”

“No.”

“But this is not like the last time, when their ignorance protected them.”

“Their ignorance serves a purpose still,” Audrey told her. “They have lessons to learn. The entire truth would only distract them.”

“But they are so smart.” Cecilia moved another piece along her opposite border, poised to attack.

Audrey moved another cube onto her second tier, stacking it with the first to make a low Tower.

Cecilia frowned at this, realizing her error. She moved one of her own cubes to the second tier. Too late, however, to be an effective counter.

“ ‘Smart’ will help them only so much,” Audrey said. “Better they learn how to be
ruthless
. They must be pushed to the brink, broken, and then remolded. It is the only way they have a chance of surviving.”

“And the place for this is Paxington? That so-called Headmistress, Miss Westin. We will be lucky if she does not kill them first.”

“Westin is not the threat she once was to children,” Audrey told her. She toppled her fledgling Tower, casting its pieces into Cecilia’s territory, capturing two of her cubes. “Besides, I have spoken with her. All is arranged.”

“Oh, I see,” Cecilia said, now ignoring the game. “Miss Westin and Paxington are vastly reformed since the old days, eh? Did you know that seventeen children were so severely injured last year that they could not continue? That there were five fatalities?”

“Of course,” Audrey replied. “I believe that’s the point.”

Cecilia sipped her tea. “That is not the only danger. The students, they are from the families, ours, theirs, all the other great ones, mortal and immortal—the social elite and privileged few.” She huffed. “Do you know what they will do to our poor little lambs?”

“They will devour them,” Audrey told her, “if Eliot and Fiona fail to grow.”

Cecilia glowered at Audrey. Without looking at the board, she moved another cube onto the second tier.

Audrey raised an eyebrow. Interesting. In three moves, Cecilia would capture the entire second ring. The old witch apparently had some spark left to her.

“You think me a monster,” Audrey replied. “But you’ve forgotten the real monsters in our world: horrors with bat wings and serpent tongues, nightmares made real.” She cocked her head, hearing the heartbeat and breath she’d been waiting for all morning. “Especially the monsters with sharp smiles and large ears ‘the better to hear with.’ ”

Audrey turned to face the stairwell. “Come in, Old Wolf. The door is open to you.”

Beneath them came the sound of the door’s locks clicking open, the knob turning, and whisper-silent footfalls.

Faint gray shadows crisscrossed the spiral of stairs as a figure came up.

His smile was the first thing she saw, like some hybrid Cheshire cat and great white shark making a grand entrance. Henry Mimes gave her a short bow and then gave one to Cecilia as well. He was dressed for walking today: gray slacks, sensible sneakers, a black turtleneck, and a baseball cap that framed his silver hair.

Dangerously handsome and dangerously deceptive.

And yet . . . Audrey could not help but smile back at the fool, if only a little.

“What do you want, Henry?” Audrey said. “Your visits are never merely to exchange pleasantries.”

“It could be that way . . . if you desired, my Queen of Swords.” Henry looked about the room. “How quaint. I see you still have my grandfather clock in good repair.” His gaze caught the picture window and its view of the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. “A lovely location. I approve.”

Cecilia, stone-faced, poured a cup of tea for Henry and offered it to him.

He smiled, accepted her gift . . . but paused as the vapors reached his nose. “Thank you, dear witch of the Isle Eea.” He set the cup back on the table. “I think we’ll pass on your poison this morning.”

Cecilia wisely said nothing.

“You’re in an unusually good mood,” Audrey said.

“Am I not always?” His attention drifted to the game of Towers. “But you’re right, today is special: my favorite nephew and niece’s first day of high school. So many plots and devices afoot. It makes for a delectable mix.”

“So many words,” Cecilia hissed, “and yet he says so little.”

Henry’s smile cooled a few degrees, but his gaze did not lift from the board. “You know, old woman, that you can win in six turns? Here.” He reached over and slid two cubes at once to flank Audrey’s collapsed tower.

“That’s not a legitimate move,” Cecilia told him.

“It is,” Henry said. “Just one that you, in your too-long years, have failed to learn. Or perhaps senility has settled upon your once-keen mind?”

Audrey saw that her captured pieces could be used to build additional Towers on Cecilia’s side in three moves—and her own border defenses after that would be insufficient. While she could still get to the center, Henry’s new strategy had her losing her entire backcourt . . . and then the game.

She locked eyes with him. There was no more emotion or additional truths, however, behind his sparkling empty eyes.

“One must practice to keep one’s defenses sharpened, no?” he asked.

“The Council?”

“Meeting today,” Henry replied. “They require our presence. I thought that I would offer you a ride.”

“Always and never the gentleman,” Audrey said, and stood. “I accept your offer.”

“Splendid,” Henry cooed. He turned to Cecilia, and his slender hand reached out to caress her face. Cecilia recoiled before this gesture. “Ah, I would bring you as well, my lovely,” he said, “but there are some on the Council who would love to part your head from your shoulders should you cross their path.”

Cecilia gripped a butter knife.

Henry spared a glance at its edge. “Perhaps another time you and I will dance.” He moved to the stairs. “Today, regrettably, we have business to attend to: The Council wishes to discuss its newest members, and provided they are allowed to live . . . we shall discuss how to avert the end of the world.”

Audrey gathered her courage and followed. “I expected no less.”

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. Fragments of one Towers set were found in the Neolithic hunter-gatherer settlement, Göbekli Tepe (southeast Turkey c. 9000 B.C.E.). This makes Towers the oldest (nontrivial) game, predating Chinese Go and Egyptian Senet by more than four thousand years. A Towers board is circular. Lines radiate outward to make thirty-two spaces of alternating color on the circumference, a second tier closer of sixteen spaces, a third tier with eight spaces, and a single circular space in the center. Placed on the board are sixteen white cubes and sixteen black. A simple checkers mechanism was assumed, but in 1753, a set was discovered in Pompeii preserved
in the middle
of a game. Cubes were stacked into towers (of increasing size) on the inner circles, while others remained as single stones, indicating a complexity of rules that experts agree no Neolithic hunter-gathers could have developed.
Gods of the First and Twenty-first Century, Volume 1, Earliest Myths.