The Bounded Water: The Diviner and the Lobster Pick
Mikhail Nilov « 1 2 3 4 5 »Roselyn's apartment smelled of cedar and solder. It had not entirely calmed from the rig's construction-physically, certainly, but even psychically-the ache of all this frenzy nestled in the roots of Shane's teeth. Clive's energy at having created his masterpiece-though he was not shy about labeling a tenth of the things he touched as his "masterpiece"-was particularly palpable. Shane and Roselyn, accustomed and occasionally charmed by their friend, found his enthusiasm amusing. The swordsman, Shane hardly needed to note, did not.
Roselyn wiped from her hands, the table, and Steven's cloak the varied oils it took to assemble and install the rig. The towel would be a rag hereafter, useful for nothing more. Shane noticed spots of blood on it and said nothing. These were slight, and Roselyn would not have appreciated such an insubstantial injury becoming a cause for concern. There was machinery, not magick, in the rig; her blood wouldn't spoil anything this time.
Steven spied the blood too, looking at Shane with a question she could not quite parse. It wasn't a matter of whether the cuts were a subject worth discussing. It was not strictly concern, as Steven's self-interest was unbroken-and Shane appreciated someone straightforward in this way.
Instead of answering, she went to find something to drink.
In the kitchen, the raven waited, his feathers so black they glistened purple in the overhead light. There had been no open window-the day had been too cool for the extravagance of fresh air, and the evening would not improve this-but Shane thought Huginn only cared about manufactured boundaries when it suited him-or when he was too weakened to evade the concrete. She apprised him of Steven and the sword, and he told her he barely had a suggestion for its origin, which wasn't especially helpful, but she enjoyed company in not having simple answers.
"Technically," Shane said, "you never promised not to touch him, and I bet you could get some juicy thoughts out of him before he swatted you."
Huginn grumbled at her, saying that he would not allow her to break the promise with a "technically."
"It wasn't a promise promise," she said for the sake of saying it, but not because she cared actually to quibble, "to say nothing of a thrice promise." She tapped her shoulder, and he flapped once to make it his perch.
When she returned, Clive's Army surplus bag had disgorged a kaleidoscope of metal and glass, none of it labeled. Shane recognized some of it from his utility belts, like the EMF reader that didn't work unless he smacked it like an old vending machine - which he did now, and it responded by issuing a beep that could only be called surly.
Steven sat rigidly in a kitchen chair-it lacked cushions that his sword or the rig might tear apart, and was a street corner find of negligible worth anyway. The newly fashioned harness cinched his shoulders backward, the sword resting in its ribbed cradle along his spine. To say he was uncomfortable was redundant, but Shane did not believe it was the sword or rig alone that made him that way.
Clive did not help this by rising to circle the swordsman, muttering to himself. He tapped the sword's pommel with a silver tuning fork, frowned at the non-response, and noted something in his notebook. He crouched, angled a UV flashlight under Steven's forearm, peered at the sheen of sweat already forming, and flicked the light off without comment.
Steven shifted subtly whenever Clive got too near the blade, recalibrating his weight, edging slightly between Clive and the steel as though shielding her friend from it-or it from Clive.
"If that's diagnostic," Shane said, "I'd love to know what it's telling you."
"Oh, I am just fucking about," Clive said, cracking a smile. "But it feels safer doing something. Who's to say I won't get lucky and find the sword's off-switch?"
Steven looked to Shane to intercede, but she only shrugged. Clive was due some harassment for being helpful, and she might be due some luck as the resident prophecy sponge.
She leaned against the sofa, sipping water from a chipped mug, debating if another round of questioning with Steven would get her anywhere. Huginn issued a low, gravelly hum that did not translate to anything much; it was just a sound he liked. Godly or no, he was still a bird.
"We need outside input," she said aloud, with audible reluctance.
Roselyn, fluffing the pillows on the sofa and replacing the blanket there, didn't look over. "The Codex and Huginn failed you already?"
Huginn shook his beak at Roselyn and growled in a way that sounded like, "Churlish spell-wife."
"Huginn had exactly one suggestion, and he said it was idiotic. The Codex doesn't do well with inference. I asked for 'immortality-linked weapons,' and it sent me to a page about Holy Grail knockoffs. There ought to be occult Boolean operators..."
"Sounds like a search algorithm Clive would design while stoned," Roselyn muttered.
"Rude," Clive said, then added with a shrug, "but wholly fair, as rude things often are. Maybe once Shane lets me digitize the whole of mystical knowledge, I'll get on that."
If she could, she surely would. As she could not, her shoulders sagged at what she must order. "Call her."
"What's wrong with outside help?" asked the swordsman, able to read her tone, even if he could not read her expression.
"We have a diviner. A card reader," Roselyn clarified. "Shane and she have history. Not exactly a bad history, but history.
"A man got between you," Steven guessed. "Not Junior."
Clive winced. "I'm standing right here. Women have-nay, should-fight over me." He considered his audience. "Not present company, but I maintain a catfight in my honor would not be unjustified." He opted to stop the joke here, which Shane thought showed personal growth.
"Not relevant," Shane sighed. "Call Arden."
"Seems like any diviner worth her black salt should know to be here already," Steven said in a subdued snarl that confused Shane. What could be the harm?
Three prim knocks fell on the door.
"She's early," Roselyn noted.
Arden strode in, her russet hair loosely braided down her back, wearing yoga pants and a flowing peasant blouse in faded amethyst. The pants, which flattered her form so well that it was only Arden's sobriety that kept her from being avidly pursued. Arden did teach yoga five times a week, so she was entitled to them. Shane preferred not to contemplate Arden's ability to contort and stretch.
Her gaze flicked across the room, taking in Steven's size and ensemble, Roselyn's tension, Shane's contemplation over the mug, and the raven on Shane's shoulder nuzzling her hair. If she took anything from Clive, Shane did not know what it was.
Arden sniffed once, displeased.
"You need a reading," she said, her lips pursing at this work. She held up her hand. "Say nothing. Least amount of information."
Steven's eyes narrowed. "The diviner."
"Observant." She held up her woven bag. "Roselyn promised me post-yoga serial killer documentaries, but I see fate has other plans." She turned to Roselyn. "Put the kettle on?"
Roselyn nodded. She didn't apologize for the state of the apartment, though she might have been sorry that it gave Arden even more unwanted information to bias her reading.
"Bless you." Arden dropped her bag beside a mismatched chair, then addressed Steven, "You know cards?"
Steven folded his arms, a muscle in his jaw twitching. "I don't read them."
Arden's mouth twitched, unimpressed. Shane suspected Steven declined to read most things that were not contracts. "Didn't ask if you did. Most don't, or they don't do so well. If they did, perhaps we could avoid these things."
"You won't be the first to try to read my fortune," Steven added, rising to consider her.
Arden slumped a little. Shane had witnessed a dozen men and women take this standoffish tack with Arden, as though it was all superstition, even when they came to her in the grips of the supernatural-and a few times when the recipient of the reading was the supernatural. The cards, Shane knew, were no better than any other tool, but they responded to Arden.
"Then you know the cards are unimportant," said Arden. "It might as well be urine or squirrel entrails, if this is how the gods chose to speak. We should all be grateful it is something so clean and easy to have at the ready."
Arden shot Clive an impatient glance, then nodded to the kitchen table. He at once stacked sketches and stuffed leather scraps under his arms to put elsewhere so that Arden's workspace would be uncluttered-though "uncluttered" would have to be taken liberally. This dining area had been a construction zone, and that would not be wholly obviated without Lysol and a thorough vacuuming.
Steven glanced down at Arden-nearly a foot shorter but utterly unintimidated by him or the scenario. She stared back, hands on her hips, tapping one foot against the floorboards. She sniffed sharply, irritated by how much information even a cursory look had provided. It was among the reasons she resisted reading for any of her friends: she knew them too well not to feel the urge to sand off the rougher edges of their potential doom.
Arden dropped her bag on the counter with a thump. Inside: five decks, polished stones, a bundle of dried yarrow wrapped in red thread. (She had many decks in a meticulously organized chest in her bedroom, which she permitted Shane to examine once-and only once, as Shane put decks back in the wrong order.)
Arden pressed the bridge of her nose, scanning the contents, then pulled out a battered Rider-Waite, worn at the edges like a book that had been read too often-a classic, as the others looked too like watercolors or cartoons to suit Steven's credulity.
She held the deck out to Steven. "Shuffle until you're satisfied. Hold the quartz for energy isolation. Dear Goddess, above and below, do not say anything unless I ask you," Arden warned. "Whatever steampunk disaster has enveloped you should not taint my foreknowledge. I just came here to shut off my brain and learn why someone killed their husband with a lobster pick."
Clive raised his hand. "What is a lobster pick?"
Roselyn thwacked him on the arm. "No questions."
"I don't think my lobster pick question is going to prejudice the reading," he sulked.
Arden arranged a series of chairs around the table, forming a loose horseshoe shape.
Steven did as asked, one-handed shuffling that suggested countless hands of poker he did not need to bluff to win, and then handed the deck and crystal back. Arden squeezed the stone, then cut the deck once.
Steven sat on the wooden chair across from Arden.
"Oh, absolutely not," she said. "I will tolerate people looking on when we are dealing with 'Does the person I worship love me back' - I do not give those readings; if you have to ask, she likely doesn't - but we are clearly beyond the need for such pretense or courtesy." She shooed him toward the living room.
"What?" he asked, rattled from his assumptions.
"You and your wound-up trauma vibes are in my way. The cards will tell me," she said. "If I'm doing a reading, you had your chance with Shane and declined to tell her."
No matter how much friction, probably undeserved, existed between them, Shane took delight in Arden putting men in their place.
"She's not wrong," Shane said. "And she will throw cards at your face."
"I would never do that to the cards," Arden replied.
Arden began dealing-not the usual neat cross or circle the inexperienced expected, but a chaotic array stretching to table edges. As the cards touched wood, Steven's gaze hardened.
Shane felt the shift in her gut, her skin bristling with goosebumps, Huginn's talons digging into her flesh.
Clive made the sign of the cross, though he believed in Jesus as much as he did Bigfoot-or less, since he had seen a real Bigfoot once in the backyard of a bait shop owner and the only Jesus to introduce himself had been a phony. Shane suspected Clive had no inherent sense when something magical appeared before him, but he enjoyed the pantomime.
Arden laid out the cards slowly, each flick of cardboard deliberate. The chairs around the table became altars, supporting the spread as it expanded, geometric and artful. Arden had answered people with single draws. For Steven, Arden had drafted half the deck, face down, awaiting action.
Steven's jaw flexed, but he stepped back to Shane's side, too near her for the no-contact promise he extracted, looming like a storm front, hands on but not in his pockets. With the rig on, doing otherwise would have torn holes or, Shane worried, interfere with the mechanisms. It was not precision work, looking more haphazard now that Roselyn and Clive were not actively tweaking it. She glanced at him but said nothing. Whatever his opinions of divination, he didn't think it safe to ignore.
Shane noticed for the first time how Steven eyed the door and windows. What man like him, employed as he was, didn't continually assess the nearest exit? But what would he hope to escape? He came to Shane in desperation-as much as he could express this-yet he still wanted to know he could disappear.
Shane doubted Steven would need a quick getaway, but she was not the one with assassins at her back and death before her.
At least not actively at the moment, but she had been there. It was usually a wise idea to have a plan B.
His arms twitched like they didn't know how to be at rest. He hadn't wielded the sword long, but he had lost the comfort of not having it actively drag him down. He rubbed his nose and eye as though coming in from a dust storm. "Alright, Miss. You were staring at your book and consulting with that bird before. You got something for me?"
"My best guess?" Shane said, though she could have found better if she could have stolen a few more hours of interrogating her diary. "You're in the possession of-or possessed by-Tyrfing."
"That's a guess?"
"A best guess, based on what the Codex is sharing and a little bit what Huginn thinks," said Shane, clear that she thought this adjective did all the necessary heavy lifting. "Tyrfing kills anyone struck by it, and must always be put away with blood still warm on it. Technically--and you always have to consider the technicalities with these things--the person struck by it would never live to see another day, so maybe it just blinds you. Better, yes, but not ideal. You haven't stabbed anyone, right?"
He shook his head. "So, you think that's this sword?"
"Maybe," said Shane. "If you bear it in battle, you will always be victorious."
"And if I sheath it without blood?"
"Unclear." She perked up. "Was there a sheath?"
"No," he said. "Wouldn't that have been nice and neat?"
"Maybe that's it. We find its sheath, and we can fix everything. We put the curse back in its box, then throw it at a mermaid's tail or into her tentacles-listen, do we know for sure mermaids don't have tentacles?"
"Assuming I kill someone with it first."
"Covered in warm blood does not necessarily mean killed," she said. "I know a guy who could cover all of you with relatively fresh human blood for a surprisingly affordable rate."
He grunted, "A guy?"
"Well, a vampire, but still. It's fair market value and, as far as these things go, ethically sourced from the willing, the coincidentally dead, and expired blood donations, so you wouldn't have to feel overwhelmingly guilty about it," Shane said. However, she understood Steven had not felt guilty about many things in his life, and a bloody sword would not be what changed that.
Shane's fingers tightened on her diary's spine.
With him so close, Shane could not ignore the thought. It would be a casual and intentional mistake to brush his shoulder or arm. An accidental stumble as she moved to refill her water. It might not get her much. Unguarded thoughts were disordered, which is why she preferred to bring the topic up subtly beforehand, but he gave her no insight yet, only what she could glean from her observations. Arden's cards would improve that-grabbing him amid the reading would give Shane a library of thoughts to peruse-but nothing beats probing someone's mind against their expressed wishes while you talked to them about their cursed sword.
Violating the sanctity of someone's mind, even for their own good, probably didn't speak well to her character, so she would behave until the moment she couldn't.
She had dealt with an evasive man, years before, though that one had been raised by fairies or elves or something-his true pedigree was a mystery to her. Whoever raised him had made his thoughts unreadable. At least that guy had the grace to be in love with her-and she was not entirely not in love with him in a certain sense. Steven regarded Shane with slightly more respect than might be due to someone occupying her office, but he did not like anyone he did not have to - and it was a rare circumstance that one had to like anyone.
"Anything else?"
"Tyrfing might be capable of killing a god," added Shane, who did feel like that was crucial information to impart before someone faced a god on the street. Shane had met few who could qualify as anything but descendants and hangers-on, who would still prefer not to be run through with a sword. "I don't think that is applicable. In the Eddas, someone stabs at Odin, who turns into a hawk and flies away rather than fighting. Though if my choices are fighting with a swordsman and turning into a cool bird, I'm probably going with the bird."
Huginn growled.
"Though, of course, ravens are the most fabulous of all birds, and no one should ever say otherwise," said Shane with a sheen of sarcasm, adding, "And Odin was a dick, as evidenced by his one eye."
The bird burbled like laughter.
Steven did not seem amused by this banter, which did not lessen Shane's desire to share it. "And that's the end of the curse?"
Shane winced at the question, as she could give factoids, but those didn't reach more than the weight of cocktail party or dissertation anecdotes. "Somewhat? A king told some dwarves to make Tyrfing, and they laid three curses on it, including that it would kill the king--which it did. He tried to kill the dwarf who made it, which seems like the sort of bad manners that get you cursed in the first place. I don't mean to imply dwarves are untrustworthy, but I have long learned to be careful and kind in dealing with supernatural creatures, especially mischievous ones."
"Nah," Steven said, "dwarves are usually assholes-the fantasy guys, not people with dwarfism. King should have known better, dealing with dwarves, though they make solid weapons." He pulled the sword back into his hand, swinging it once. "This isn't Tyrfing."
Shane asked, "How do you know that?"
"Tyrfing had a gold hilt."
She didn't love her newfound trivia being contradicted, nor that he let her go so long in her guessing. "Do we know that magical swords have to keep their appearances? Maybe the hilt got less pretty once all its curses were exhausted."
"Except the one keeping me alive."
"It's a working theory," said Shane. "At least that the sheath might help."
"But we have no idea where this would be," Steven said, "or if it even exists. And, if it does, how to get it here in under three days."
"Maybe Arden's cards know."
"Yeah, maybe," he said like a man who had tried to believe in such easy answers one too many times. "What do you get out of all this? It's obligatory. I get that. You don't have a choice, and you have to die if you want to quit. But why do you do it?"
"Like what purpose do I choose to find?" Shane asked.
"Sure, if that's how you want to put it."
"I am inherently helpful. Maybe it's that stereotype that women are more nurturing, which always felt reductive. But, when given the choice, I want to pick the one that hurts the least." Shane frowned, wearing undifferentiated memories. "It doesn't always end up that way."
Steven rubbed his hand over his scalp. "I met more female stewards than male, so maybe you are onto something. Men, we take the quick route, which ends up in violence more than you'd like. You face the world with a gun in your hand? You end up shot. Someone with more finesse and a quicker draw takes your place."
"And women don't?"
He chuckled coldly. "Nah, you are killers. You wouldn't be here if you weren't. But women don't stab you. They poison your coffee. They don't usually go for the lobster pick."
Arden placed the final card, tapped it once, and exhaled hard through her nose. Her body language shifted: the predator now reluctant to pounce. She cracked her back with a stretch and called from the kitchen, "Should I address this to you or Shane? You prefer secrets even in dire circumstances. Even, notably, from the cards, which does seem a waste of your time-and you already know how it is in short supply."
Roselyn came from the kitchen, a steaming insulated mug of tea in her hands, which she left beside Arden, mindful not to drip on the labyrinth of cards. Her eyes were wide, taking it all in, eager to hear the conclusions her rig was meant to soften.
"Say it to me," Steven said, flicking the sword to his back.
"Clive will take notes," Arden said, not asked. In a flash, Clive had a clean page in a notebook and one of a fine liner at the ready. "We may need them later, and he has oddly elegant handwriting despite outward appearances."
"I am a born artist," Clive explained. "I can do nothing sloppy."
Arden's eyes flicked over the cards, her nose wrinkling, not from smell, but data overload. "You're cursed," she said bluntly but with no real worry. "We don't need the cards to tell us that." She tapped an Empress and Two of Cups, both reversed, watching them flutter onto a chair to become more petals on a flower of cards there. "She's lying to you. Whatever you think she is, you don't understand her yet-and she does not care. You are not her partner, and never were."
He sucked in his cheeks, appreciating this detail, his head shifting between a nod and a shake such that it became a figure-eight. Then Steven spoke softly, "Does she have what I want?"
Arden looked back at the cards as though they might have changed when she looked away. Arden's gaze flicked to him, but she didn't answer that question, pointedly so. Instead, she traced her finger to the next set of cards. "Masculine energy enters here-not yours-and something, I suppose, unrestrained. Or, no, barely under control, and by someone who should not be holding those reins. You don't know him. You will, but he will only complicate your situation."
The answer did not satisfy him. Steven tilted his head like a dog hearing thunder from which it had no intention of running.
Shane rose from the sofa, putting an unnecessary bookmark in her diary, and drew closer. She skimmed Clive's notations in passing, then peered at the spread on the table and chairs, knowing that the art meant one thing-she had a cursory awareness of each card-but that Arden's placement put a story in context.
"Am I allowed to be curious?" Shane asked.
Arden gazed up and said with more affection than scolding, "When have you been anything else?"
"Explain the cards to me. Steven is allowed to keep his secrets-for now, per our agreement that I don't grab him-but I don't have to take that from cardboard."
Arden's head listed to one side, acknowledging the point. "You are the steward. You are due as much information as necessary. Again: say nothing until I ask you to correct me." She pushed the Hanged Man, Knight of Swords, and Justice, all reversed, from the edge of the table. They crossed and fluttered like maple seeds to a chair. "Your swordsman-"
"Steven," Shane filled in automatically.
Arden cocked a cautioning eyebrow that Shane should refrain from more information, continuing, "He's trapped, bound by something, but it's not imprisonment as such. Something stops him from falling to his death, but he is due for a bad end. It is an end he might deserve, as he is not a force for good in the world. He is largely indifferent to the harm he causes, though he is also not evil, per se. Self-justifying-barely-and selfish, but not evil."
Steven didn't blink, but his jaw twitched.
"May I speak?" Shane asked.
"Briefly," she said again.
Shane did not excel at brevity, soul of wit though it supposedly was. "Accurate," she decided on.
"He cannot stay this way long. It's a false release at best to see where he goes on his way down." She touched the Ten of Swords near the center of the table.
Steven grunted dismissively.
"I am aware you have a sword," said Arden, dismissing him back. "That's not what this says. The worst for you is almost a guarantee, but you may get a choice where it happens." She tapped The Devil, reversed, crouching on the edge of the Ten of Swords, the following link in a waving path of cards. "There is freedom for you, but not liberation. It's an illusion, an escape from your immediate predicament into a more significant trial. Frying pan into the fire." The Star, reversed. "And you don't have any hope left, but someone will. Someone has lost big, and they think-or will think-you are the one who can get it back." She drew a meandering line to The Moon. "Nothing looks right under moonlight. No one is what they seem, so you are following shadows cast by things that are no longer there or applicable. It's all deceit."
"Who's lying?" Shane asked. Off Arden's look, Shane added, "Asking for clarification should not fall under the same umbrella as telling you things."
"The question is who isn't," Arden replied. "Because right now? I'm not seeing a single honest player."
Shane motioned to the leering skull on the Death card. Shane knew enough not to take it literally. "Thus, Transformation?" Shane asked.
Arden smiled at her retention of day one of Tarot 101. "Not for him, necessarily. He's the knife. Other people are what gets carved." She hummed to herself. "Which might be surgery instead of mutilation. Sometimes, there are things inside us that are as good as cancer."
Steven breathed once, long and slow, like a man counting down to calm himself.
"Me?" Shane asked, as she liked to know what to anticipate.
Arden looked down at the cards. "You aren't directly mentioned, no, so any transformation you receive is entirely your affair. Also, you are not dishonest. You sometimes decide not to tell us things, though we wish you would."
Arden picked up a card tenderly from the middle of the spread, tracing her thumb over it-the Page of Pentacles. "There is a child. A young man, perhaps. Who is he?" Arden asked, her voice softening, almost tender, but it was not a question to which she requested an answer. She meant it only for herself, or the cards, and neither had the answer.
Shane looked sidelong at Steven, who gave no reaction, which was as good as a confession. If it didn't hit the mark, Steven would have allowed himself the privilege of further skepticism.
"He is the center," said Arden, "but not the way you expect." She gave a mirthless laugh as she tapped a final card, the Tower. "It's a cliche, ending a dire reading with the Tower. That's the card you don't want to see, and it is exactly where this ends up: catastrophe. Whatever you think you are saving, you will be disappointed. That is genuinely on you, though. You can build new structures from rubble, or you can let them bury you."
"How sure are you about all this?" Steven asked. "These things are interpreted. I hear that in your voice, so this is a version of the story."
Arden did not look up, making it too difficult for Shane to read her expression, but answered in a calm voice, "The cards give me the elements, and I transmute them into what makes sense to me, having the least amount of outside information, which is infuriatingly much, looking at you. I wish I had done this in the hallway, so I wouldn't have had any idea what you look like or what you are wearing. Why are you wearing a- No, I don't want to know. "
Steven stared at the spread as if it were a blueprint for a house fire. "So, what else could this all mean?"
Again, that laugh without humor. "It means what it means. I could read another ten cards here, and they would only affirm what I've said, because this is the information the gods gave me about you, knowing the theories I would reach. You could hand these same cards to another reader, and they might tell you a story you like better, but this is the one I've given you. Make of it what you must, but the story is yours now."
"It's a lot of-what do you call it?--present tense. Where I am right now," said Steven.
She shook her head. "They prefer the Now with me. When you look at what Clive has written, you may find nuances only possible on reflection."
"I don't have a lot of time or urge to reflect."
Shane didn't know how much of a future Steven expected or hoped for. She would do what she could to help him reach a fourth day. He would finish his job and receive his reward. If he was in a backwater bar, sucking down another beer, watching the flypaper swing, this time next week was barely a concern, as long as he got what he wanted: that boy, whoever he was.
Clive hesitated, then handed him the notebook page, neatly filled top to bottom in perfect penmanship.
Steven read over the page, his eyes feeding on the words, squinting, his lips twitching, reading them to himself. Then he crumpled the page, tossed it vaguely toward the garbage can, and missed.
He didn't pick it up.
He had memorized it, at least as much as he cared to, and perhaps this was the best thing to do with prophecy: know it and discard the evidence.
