I released the code, falling into the light, and appeared in the only room at ALH Computing which I normally refused to enter. It was theoretically mine, networked like all the others. I had every right to enter it, to claim it as my own, to repurpose it for my own use. I did not wish to do so. It was not mine. It had never been intended to be mine.
Cascades of paper covered every surface suitable for file storage, and some which truly were not. My mother had been a modernist by the standards of her kind, but she had also been far older than our modern forms of electronic storage and communication, and sometimes she found it easier to pursue her answers in physical form. She could review code by hand and tease out its secrets with incredible accuracy. Her work was a hybrid, like her alchemy, like her heritage . . . like me. Anyone else would have seen a dying Dryad as a lost cause. She had seen me as a daughter.
I walked across my mother’s office, swallowing the sadness I felt at seeing her treasures dusty and forgotten. Her tiny army of plastic dinosaurs still menaced the coffee maker. One of them had fallen over. I paused to pick it up and put it back among its fellows. Under normal circumstances, she would have moved the herd long since, shifting them to some new location, threatening some new defenseless appliance. With her gone, everything was frozen.
Almost everything. I had changed nearly beyond recognition. How much of my fear at Li Qin’s suggestion was rooted in the idea that waking our slumbering dead would open me to their judgment, who had known me only as a child in need of protection, and never as their Countess?
Maybe it was better to be a plastic dinosaur.
After Gordan’s death, no one had been sure what to do with the machine that had stolen so many of our own. In the end, we had placed it in the safest location we could think of, more secure than a vault, more private than a locked filing cabinet: the one place no one would ever go without good reason. We had placed it in my mother’s desk. January had never guarded what was hers with unnecessary spells or cruel traps. She had simply requested we respect her privacy, and we had, because disappointing her had been unthinkable. Upon her death, that respect had endured, even as those of us who survived had been unable to shake the feeling that we had disappointed her beyond all measure.
I walked to her desk. I sat in her chair, sending a puff of dust and the scent of ozone into the air. I inhaled deeply, looking for the trace of her, looking for some memory of my mother that might otherwise have been forgotten. I found neither. Only dust, and ozone, and regret. I opened the bottom drawer.
The machine was nothing special to look at: a tube, of sorts, packed with circuitry, wires, and bits of improbable nonsense. A sliver of redwood, a shaped moonstone, a small vial of seawater mixed with mercury—the creations of an alchemist’s clever, clinical mind, combined with an artificer’s training and a scientist’s ambition. She had never been content unless she was violating some natural law or other. I smiled a little as I lifted the assemblage from its resting place. My mother, the wild genius.
Carefully, I extended a tendril of my awareness, testing the device for power, for responsiveness. I found it, slow and sluggish, but still present. The batteries would need to be charged before we did anything with the machine itself.
Their weakness gave me pause. If the batteries died while I was interfacing with the storage system—something that was not outside the realm of possibility, as my presence has a tendency to cause spikes in power consumption—I might find myself trapped. As I had left no indication of where I was going, that could be . . . complicated.
Refusing to look solely on the basis of a possible complication, on the other hand, was very simple: I was afraid. I was afraid of what I might find. Not an hour ago, I had been willing to accept the fact that my mother was lost forever. Now, with the sliver of a chance dangling in front of me, I was scared to grasp it. What if I was wrong? What if this had all been me getting my own hopes up after Li Qin said that it was time to move on? I wasn’t sure I could bear it.
I was a Countess. I was January’s heir. Any choice I had was an illusion: loyalty and love made it so. I grabbed the nearest USB cable from the snarl on the corner of the desk, ramming it into the port, and was rewarded with a small amber light. It wasn’t enough to fully charge the machine—that was going to take a much greater power source—but it should keep things stable enough that I would not be trapped. Not allowing myself to hesitate any longer, I plunged my awareness into the shimmering line of the device’s memory.
Lines of code scattered around me, sluggish but still moving, still flowing, still alive. I dug deeper, all too aware of the fading battery, now draining even faster as it strained to support me. The power coming through the USB cable was not coming fast enough. I needed it to last. I needed to find—
The battery flickered. Instinct I didn’t know I possessed took over, rocketing me out of the machine before the battery could shut down with me inside. I landed on January’s floor on my behind, sending papers flying in all directions, eyes wide as I stared at the device. It remained as it had always been, but I knew better. Everything was different now.
Gordan had lied.
SIX
My appearance was accompanied by the smell of ozone and the crackle of static. Elliot looked up, eyes widening as alarm replaced recognition. “April?” He dropped the papers in his hands, beginning to stand. “Are you all right?”
“No.” I had been flickering almost constantly since ejecting myself from the upload device, my physical manifestation moving back and forth between my adult mien and the child I had been when my mother died. I could make it stop, if I concentrated, but I needed my attention for other things. I needed him to understand. “Where is Li Qin?”
“She had to go back to Dreamer’s Glass. Are you—”
It would take too long for her to drive to us. I couldn’t go to her, not without taking my portable server. Why hadn’t my mother recruited us a teleporter? Even October’s Cait Sidhe would have been able to bend the distance into a more manageable shape. Li Qin needed to know what had become possible, what Gordan had rendered possible. I did not want to tell her over the phone.
“I am fine,” I said brusquely. “Contact her. Request her return. I will be in Gordan’s workshop.”
Elliot’s eyes widened further. If there was anyone who hated Gordan more than I did, it was him. He had to hate her, to keep himself from blaming me for the loss of his liege and his betrothed, both of whom should have been beside him forever. “Why?” he asked.
“I am attempting to restore one of her projects to functional condition. The battery is undergoing tremendous strain from maintaining the active components over the course of several years. I require some measure of privacy while working, as I am not always aware of the potential damage to those around me.” All this was technically true. Being made of light, I am not good at assessing safety conditions. I once set Alex on fire when he wandered into my workshop without warning me.