“He has Dodger’s brother, too. She’s a math kid, just like you. She sees numbers everywhere she looks. She’s also a prissy princess who doesn’t like anyone talking to her precious Roger, but she fights it down okay. We’re not friends. I think the two of you could be. I think you could learn a lot from each other. What are you, sixteen?”
“Fifteen,” admits Kim.
“Having a mentor who actually understands might do you a world of good. Timothy’s all about language, isn’t he? Well, so is Roger, and he’s the sweetest, kindest, most generous fool you’ll ever meet. These are the people you should be throwing your weight behind. Not a humbug alchemist and a dead woman dressed up in her Sunday clothes.” Erin shakes her head. “Untie me. I’ll get your brother back.”
Kim takes a hesitant step forward. “Promise?”
“Promise to try.”
Kim hesitates. Erin looks at her, trying not to focus on how easy it would be to snap her neck, how quickly one small motion would put Reed’s plans into the grave. Timothy—“Tim,” as she’s sure they call him—would die without his other half. There’d be no appropriate second vessel for the Doctrine. Even if he managed to kill Roger and Dodger, freeing the Doctrine from the confines of their flesh, it would be another fifteen years before he could try for an embodiment. All she has to do is kill a child, and she’ll have time for her revenge.
All she has to do is become Leigh’s monster daughter, and not just her science project.
When Kim unties her hands, Erin flexes them to bring back the circulation, but she doesn’t reach for the girl’s throat. When Kim unties her arms, Erin begins pulling the ropes away of her own accord, but she doesn’t lunge. Let Leigh be the monster of the piece. Erin will find another way. She knows there has to be one. There’s always another way.
The Hand of Glory is still half-potent, good for an hour or more of concealing light. She slides off the table, picks it up, and looks at Kim. “I can tie you up if you like,” she says. “They’ll think I tricked you. They won’t be angry. Not at you, anyway.”
Kim shakes her head. “I need to get to my brother.”
“Suit yourself.” Leigh always kept the matches on the workbench, next to the henbane. Erin grabs them, touches one to the Hand’s primary wick, and is gone from all human sight.
Kim stands where she is for a long moment, looking at the place where Erin isn’t. Then she runs for the door. “I’m coming, Tim,” she mutters, wishing he could hear her, knowing she’s alone. “Hold on, because I’m coming.”
BIRTHRIGHT
Timeline: 16:02 CDT, June 23, 2016 (the day goes on).
Dodger wakes naked on her back in a strange room, held down by ropes of braided silk. She blinks at the ceiling, which is a perfect astronomical map of the night sky. Then she closes her eyes.
“Roger?”
“Here.” The voice is close and distant at the same time. She opens her eyes, breaking their temporary connection, and turns her head—all she can easily move, at the moment—to see Roger on a table she assumes is much like the one she’s tied to. Like her, he’s naked. Like her, he’s tied down with silk rope. Presumably also like her, his entire body has been painted with mercury runes. She squints. Their meaning is obscure, but she can see their mathematical value, which trends, inexorably, toward zero.
“Why aren’t we dead?”
“Because we are the Doctrine.”
Silence from Dodger. Roger swallows the impulse to sigh. She’s not being intentionally slow: she doesn’t understand. He wishes he didn’t, either.
“We have the Doctrine and those kids of Reed’s don’t. If he kills us, we take the Doctrine with us, and he has to start over.” A whole new generation of—what? Science projects? Children? Clones? It doesn’t matter. They end this here and now, or they condemn another series of children just like they were to play out this little drama, over and over, forever.
“Oh.” Dodger’s voice is small. “He needs to subtract so he can add, instead of just wiping us off the board.”
“Yes. Can you see how I’m tied?”
Dodger answers with a question: “Am I covered in weird squiggles?”
“Yes,” he says.
“What do they mean?”
He’s too far away for her to see the fine points of his expression, but he’s not too far away for her to catch the flash of fear when he replies, “Reduction, removal, extraction. I was awake