Shard of Eternity
--------------------
Wings spread, and I burn across the sky, gold against the white. Look, turning, burning,
returning: another rises below me, and I pause to hover and wait for them..
---
The sheet was crumpled in my hands as the dream fractured round me and I choked on my
pillow. The curtains were drawn, but light showed round their edges. Day outside, and Asha
wasn't going to be there to come through the door and laugh at me. The siren of a Juror's van split
through the hum of the street:footsteps running, something being moved: life goes on.
As I dropped the sheets and stumbled across to the carton of juice on the table, I saw the
tattered papers that Asha had left there before last night.
Is it penance, the things we make ourselves do? Climb Everest, kiss a friend, take the knife and
scar our flesh? One of the Fallen would tell us that it was our fate, perhaps - we are their obedient
servants, humans born and to stay.
Oh, Asha, my love. You held the magic in your hand, called it like a captive star. Do you
remember the light across your face, and your surprise as I held up the mirror? "I never thought
it was so golden," you said. "It seemed natural." And you laughed. Natural? There is no nature
any more. We're born and die in a glass garden of magics and twists and torture - look, there's an
angel, here's a devil, and we humans burn ourselves into stranger forms than any of them. Your
masters the Hermeticum, the Infernus, the Hard Corps that scar themselves with technology, the
strangest of them all, the grimmers like me.
I shoved the weight of my hair back from my face, and began the first cut, read the first word.
---
Job at last, frag this unemployment game for a stacked hand of cards. Madeleine was shaken
when she came in, but then the Michaelines do that to a person. I think it's the way they keep on
fondling their swords. Can't blame her, her life's on the inside. Now just let them try it to me and
they'll be playing phallic envy on a piece of white-hot slag.
After we've finished that contract, that is.
She said, dress up, I don't know exactly who it is but there was a thrush watching and that may
mean Caim's involved. I couldn't help but show what I thought of that. Michael's crew are all a
damned set of bastards, but Sammael's crew are worse, and Caim's eyes are everywhere, and
Caim is Sammael's. I drew the curtains at that point, and never mind if that shows we know.
Damn pervert can get his jollies somewhere else.
I made her sit down and drink some tea while she told me what they'd said. "Show up at sunset
or show up in pieces." Charming. What happened to, "Educated grimmer, please accept this
invitation for yourself and your mighty mage friend to attend a meeting with.." Well, it's going
to be bad if the thrushes are watching. Or maybe that's just coincidence.One can hope.
Business suit. If nothing else, it looks more impressive next to Madeleine's black leather, black
leather, and black leather.
---
Was I shaking? I don't remember that. I do remember swearing at the bastards once I was out
of their hearing. Hulking in trenchcoats, and posing in the midday light. One of them kept on
intoning a damn prayer to Michael while the other held me gently against the wall and told me
how important it was that I show up. And that damned thrush. The Fallen scare me. They're
angels. Weren't you scared at all, Asha?
The sudden burst of sound. I hadn't seen the third Michaeline draw his gun, but it was in
his hand as I turned my head, and the thrush was an incongruous splatter of blood and brown
feathers. The first one grabbed my chin to turn my face back to his. I could still see the blood out
of the corner of my eye, streaked down the wall.
---
They'd told Madeleine the old garden near the Convent of the Sisters. We only had to run off
two fanatics, three muggers, and an idiot trying to make a name for himself by challenging me
while getting there. I truly hope that gentleman finds interest and perspective in his new career
as a statue. It'll take a week at least before it wears off.
A thrush was watching. Then it flew away.
The old garden was a mess: garbage everywhere, and some of the bins propped into a vague
seat. The Fallen have no sense of subtlety, and the Michaelines less. We headed for it.
---
City flowers filled the garden now: newspaper blossoms, glass roses of shattered bottles and
smashed hypodermics, metal leaves of old cans and fragments of sharded concrete. Sunset stained
it with blood. I don't know if Asha saw all the shadows that I saw, but I know we both saw the
Michaelines that were drifting in. One had been near the gateway, and had probably thought he
was being inobtrusive.
---
And then there was someone sitting there, and I thought, shit. Cold grey leather jacket like
stormclouds on oil, running with bronze and rainbows, hood pulled up, dark glasses over his eyes:
his skin was greyish and hard to distinguish, gloves covering his hands. Two Michaelines stepped
out to play guard of honour.
There was a glint of red from behind the glasses, and he said, voice a low tenor, "Why are you
not kneeling."
Not even a question.
---
God, I hate the Fallen.
---
Madeleine had the sense to speak where I didn't. She made a half-bow, and said, "Mighty
Zophiel, you called us, and we have come."
His expression still gave nothing away. The Michaelines were statues in the junkyard of the
garden, and there were no birds there to shift their wings. Smears of blood on a few angles of the
junk and garbage, but no birds. And that meant the thrushes must be serious. Damn.
He waited long enough for us to realise our vulnerability - oh, and it was nasty. Big men
standing there, watching us. One of the Fallen ten feet away. Mortality, my friend, in each breath
you take, and you can't know what it means - then said, "You are to undertake an extraction and
destruction. You will be paid. Josephus will give you the details."
The answers I wanted to give ran all the way from no to no via obscenity, but then I
dislike being geased, flayed, or a combination of the above, and even I might have had difficulties
holding off an enraged Authority and a pack of Michaelines. And Caim's eyes watching for us.
And where Zophiel and Caim go, Michael and Sammael follow.
All of a sudden, London seemed a bad place to be this time of year.
---
I saw the anger in your eyes, Asha. But there are times you fight, you'd say, and times you
don't.
This orange juice is bitter.
---
And Zophiel was gone.
One of the Michaelines - Josephus, I suppose - handed a dossier to me with all the friendly
attitude towards women and mages that the Michaelines are famous for, and waited for us to
leave. Fine, I needed to get home in any case before I started screaming at, in order, the dossier,
the walls, the universe, and Zophiel. And Caim, if he had a thrush out there.
It wasn't as bad as we expected, when we got home and looked at the documents. Which
probably meant that it was going to be worse.
---
I still have the papers here. Under the pile of pizza boxes and three neuroplugs and two switch
decks and one curler and a taser and a few other necessities of life.
"Proceed to the steps of the British Museum. Open an Uplink at that point: jack in, and use
the gate to Divinopolis sited there. Close to that point you will find a box sealed with the Seal of
Solomon, and guarded by an unknown number of Sentinels. Open the box and destroy the
contents by any means necessary. This will become known. When this has been accomplished,
your bank accounts will be credited with ten thousand apiece."
We were in very deep shit.
And Asha's notes end here. Because she never finished it.
We went to the British Museum by night. It was one in the morning by the time she'd finished
setting up her protocols for the Uplink. Wind had ruffled her hair into spikes from the neat cut she
liked, and she was in a shirt and trousers embroidered with runes which symbolised something or
another.
How is it possible to care so much for someone and never speak a word? Partners, yes, the
world knew we worked together, but she was always there for me, and I was always there for her.
Neither of us needed to say anything. Not even, "thank you," or, "I care," because we knew. I
knew. She must have known. She didn't need to speak as the gate ran with flame, and focused to
a single point: my deck plugged into it, and I was there, and through. Here and there, my body
in her hands, my soul stepping through into the light.
Divinopolis is frayed at the edges and riddled with holes - like the Matrix, like the Fallen
themselves, though they'd be damned if they'd admit it. I saw the great towers rising before me,
wreathed in silver and gold: living constructions of light and air. Shadows flickered at the
windows - I think they were windows. I never know with Divinopolis. Frankly, I hate the damn
place.
Three curls of IC, and I shredded them. Skill, talent, call it what you will, I have it in spades.
A mole tried to shred the ground I stood on, and I took to the air, threading between the towers:
techology spun the world for me, and glowing goggles covered my eyes. A box, they said, so
presumably it would show. The bookworm that nibbled at my connection was easily enough
knotted back on itself, and then - yes, there, I have a location, I had it! There was a shielding,
there was the box..
..and that was a Sentinel about to hit me in the small of the back.
How can any purely human being understand this? It's another sense, another level of being
- no. Stupid words. It is. That is all. Anyone who remains limited to human concepts here dies.
We are what we are, and if I am more now, then I am more. I call code, technology, power, and
nets weave from my hands to tangle that Sentinel. Hawk wings thrashed, a woman's face
screamed streams of data that wove blue and crimson: I snared her words and turned her warning
back upon her, watched her dissolve under their power.
I burn. I live.
The barrier had old power gnarled in it, sparkles of divine or infernal flame. There's a
difference? Please, show me it. Cold wind began to whirl as I danced apocalypses, tiny endings
to make a greater one: it was great, but I was greater. I was Madeleine, the Fixer, the Dancer at
the World's End, the..
*HOLD.*
The dance runs on, and I raise my eyes, to see the swirling clouds of bronzed data above,
jewel-like eyes. Simeon's story had been true, after all. But that was all he ever said now, endless
repetitions to the wall above his bed. Usiel, Usiel, Usiel the Watcher, Authority, here now above
me. Watch me, Usiel, see me dance.
*HOLD, LITTLE MADELEINE, LITTLE MAGDALENE. THIS BARRIER IS NOT TO
BE UNMADE.*
My voice was a ribbon of data or of light or of pain. "I took contract, Master Watcher." The
barrier curdled at the edges. "They say that all who walk these paths do so beneath your
protection." Flattery, it might work.
*IF YOU OPEN THAT BOX, MAGDALENE, I CAN NOT PROTECT YOU.*
The box was in my hand as the last shred of barrier blew away in fire and autumn leaves. I saw
on the horizon the rising storm: grey-winged Belial, a whip in his hand: golden Sithriel, a mirror
of light: flower-haloed Sandalphon, mighty among the Seraphim: there was time for only one
thought, a twist of amusement: see, mighty Fallen, see how one mortal can unmake..
---
The skies are mine forever. These are the paths of Heaven, and I am Belphegor, Principality
of the Celestial Hosts. Behold the light that is so fierce: I am sword and spear and winged eternity.
This is existence, this is what I am, this is who I am. I turn, and suddenly, a splintering, a
wrenching..
---
Cold wind ran across the steps as I opened my eyes. Madeleine. Yes. Winged Belphegor. I
was. Who am I? I am Madeleine. My brother Zophiel stands above me..
Zophiel's eyes hidden, a dark silhouette against the pale dawning sky.
Asha's eyes fixed on silence and so empty, the knife in her throat a splinter of last night's
shadows.
Zophiel's voice was inflectionless. "The credit will be deposited in your account. Your work
was adequate. If we receive information as to your associate's killer, we will inform you."
My throat would not work at first. Something was clotting in it like blood. "What.. What was
it? I remember her. I was.."
He considered me. "A shard of my sister Belphegor.You have destroyed a portion of eternity,
little Magdalene." Starlings and thrushes rose from the stones of the pavement in a flurry on the
wind, and he was gone with them.Of course, he didn't care what Caim knew now. It was done.
He had finished with me, with us: abandoned shreds on the steps of morning, left sitting with
death in my lap and a knife for a payment.
Oh, yes. My throat. Perfectly simple. Tears. Only tears.
Asha, Asha. And I never said a word. Here is the dagger that cut your throat and choked any
words deep down, trapped them behind cold steel. I remember you saying that mages could find
a hand to match a hilt. I don't think it was Zophiel. He could have killed me just as easily then.And
I don't believe it was a human, after what we did, what I did. So, a being of power, then.
I have destroyed a portion of eternity once. I can do it again.
---