Nemesis (2 page)

My communicator buzzed in my hand, and I flicked the touch screen to unlock it and accepted the call from my boss. Ms Weston never seemed to leave Central, especially in the last few weeks. There was always some crisis or other.

“We need you to go offworld, tomorrow,” she said, without preamble.

“Whereabouts?” I asked. Damn. I’d been intending to talk to Ada, because she didn’t have the code for this new communicator.

“Aglaia. You should speak to Markos. Aglaia’s in the middle of a crisis, and we urgently need an Ambassador to be there.”

“Isn’t Markos enough?”

“A non-Aglaian Ambassador. More than one. It seems the centaur king’s been assassinated.”

And there I was, thinking I’d be able to get through one day without someone mentioning murder.

“Damn,” I said, moving away from the guards so they wouldn’t overhear. “There’s no way they’ll let outsiders in.”

“It’s part of Alliance custom to oversee the change of leadership, as we’re a neutral force. I’m sure you already know Aglaia’s history with the Alliance.”

“Unfortunately,” I said, with a glance at the dark shape of Central silhouetted against the perpetually-grey London sky. “Is Markos back on Aglaia, then?”

“He’ll give you the details.” There was a sound of papers being shuffled. “The peace treaty with the humans was due for renewal next week, so the timing makes it all worse. This could be perceived as an attempt to ignite old conflicts. At the very least, it will delay all plans, including consultations with the Alliance.”

“You need someone who speaks Aglaian, right?” I was hardly experienced in this kind of diplomacy. Least of all with a volatile, high-magic world.

“Not just that,” said Ms Weston. “We specifically need a magic-wielder. Just in case.”

What?
“Are you sure? I was under the impression centaurs hated magic.” I retreated under the overhang outside the training complex. The last thing I wanted was anyone to hear me talking about magic.

“Yes, they do. But humans on Aglaia are all magic-wielders, and if it turns out one of them
did
have a hand in the centaur king’s death, then it’s better for us to be prepared. It goes without saying that you won’t be able to reveal you are a magic-wielder in front of the centaur contingent, but considering Earth’s lack of magic, they have no reason to suspect that you are.”

Yeah, that’s reassuring.
“If you say so. The humans, though–they’ll be trained magic-wielders. We aren’t.”

No. What I knew of magic, I’d learned on instinct when fighting for my life. And I couldn’t forget that two streets away from here, it had almost caused a wave of destruction across London. Even the guards who’d fought in the Passages that day didn’t know just how close Central had come to being wiped out. For all I knew, they were the ones who’d started the stories. People needed to believe someone had had the situation in hand.

Ms Weston paused before saying, “Actually, magic-wielders on Aglaia are relatively peaceful, at least with each other.”

“It’s the centaurs I’m more concerned about,” I muttered. “Who else is going, aside from Markos?”

“A small team. You’ll meet here tomorrow at seven.”

“Right,” I said, resigned. Aglaia was hardly an opportunity to pass up, but it felt uncomfortably like the conspiracy scenario I’d ended up mired in at the Alliance a few weeks ago. Assassination, magic, and aggravated centaurs? Still, nobody signed up as an Ambassador purely for the Valerian hover bikes.

“Good,” said Ms Weston. “Best of luck. There are two aims. Reinstate a new monarch before certain disparate centaur groups take power, and find out who killed their leader, if possible.”

“I’m pretty sure most of that is up to them, not the Alliance. They don’t like humans meddling in their affairs.”

Ms Weston drew in a breath. “Well, given the circumstances… Markos will tell you. Essentially, you’ll be acting to stop a group of enraged centaurs from declaring war on humans.”

“Great,” I said. “No pressure?”

ADA

It was the evening before I started my new job, and from the look on Nell’s face as she passed me in the corridor, I might have signed up to kick-start the apocalypse.

“Watch out,” said Alber, my brother, handing me a tub of shoe polish through my half open bedroom door. “She’s on the warpath.”

“I figured,” I said. “Shoe polish? Really?”

“Hey, you have to look the part.”

“Yeah, when I’m not chasing monsters out of the Passages.” I waved a hand in the direction of my new Alliance-issued guard uniform, laid out on my bed. Finally, I had my hands on their infamous magicproof gear, and if it wasn’t totally vain to think so, I looked damn good in it.

One of the perks of working for the Alliance. Along with free entry to the Multiverse–if I passed their tests.

Alber stepped away from my room, hands in his pockets. We vaguely resembled one another though we weren’t actually related, with the tanned skin and fair hair of Enzar, though Alber’s hair was short and spiked, while I’d dyed mine dark red.

“You’re making me jealous already. No more sneaking around. Hey, you’ll be the one arresting trespassers.”

“That’s so weird.” A month ago, I’d been arrested and taken into custody by the Alliance. Now, I was going to be working for them.

“It’s a good thing,” said Alber. “You’ve got to give us all the gossip on Central.” He glanced down the corridor at Nell, who was now running through combat manoeuvres. Behind his half open door, our older brother, Jeth, sounded like he was on the phone but was probably talking to one of his computers. Alber himself had always preferred beating up monsters on video games to actually going out into the Passages, and maintained that he only wanted to travel offworld to have a ride in a hover car on Valeria. He was incredibly jealous of my hover boot experience, which was the one part of the worst day of my life I could look back on and not want to scream.

“I wanna go to a high-tech world,” said Alber with a wistful sigh. “Do you reckon you’ll be allowed to bring anything back?”

“Probably not,” I said. “The Alliance is strict about that. They’d flip a lid if they knew half the stuff I’ve got in my room.”

“Oh, yeah, you’ve got to play by the rules now.” He smirked. “How will you survive without your daggers?”

“Shut it, you,” I said. “I’ll get proper Alliance-issued weapons. Wyvern-hide daggers. And stunners.”

“Ooh, get you,” said Alber. “That’s a fancy Taser, right?”

“With magic.” I’d had one of those stunners used on me, and it hurt like hell. Like an electric shock, but worse for me because I was a magic-wielder of the unconventional type.

And now I wished I hadn’t thought about magic, because just that one word made the anxiety come clawing back.

“That’s badass.”

“Yeah.” I managed a smile. “Guess it kind of is.”

“Come on, Ada, admit it. You’ve spent years fantasising about running around with the Alliance guards.”

“I have to pass evaluation, first.”

From what I figured, it involved proving I had at least a rudimentary understanding of how the Multiverse worked, and could handle the unpredictable nature of patrolling the monster-ridden Passages. In the thirteen-odd years I’d helped Nell at her offworld shelter, I’d interacted with people from too many worlds to count. Nell had taught me three offworld languages and seven styles of combat from different worlds. And I’d battled my share of monsters. Even cut the tail off a wyvern.

But I was still nervous as hell about tomorrow. Nervous enough that I actually considered calling a certain someone on my (also-new, also-Alliance-issued) communicator.

“You’ll rock it,” said Alber. “You can run circles around them. They won’t know what hit them.”

At one time, I would have had the same level of confidence. But after that day, I couldn’t even sneak into the Passages anymore.
It was for the best,
I told myself. That hidden door was where an army of dreyverns had almost killed Nell. Would probably have killed the rest of us, too, if not for…

I looked at the communicator lying on my bed for a moment, then shook my head and set down the shoe polish on top of a stack of books. I didn’t used to get this nervous about life changes. As we’d lived under the Alliance’s radar most of my life, every day had been about risk. But since waking from that coma, everything I’d once took for granted had suddenly seemed like it belonged to a different Ada. A more naive Ada who had no idea she carried a built-in weapon that could destroy the Multiverse.

Someone who never would have taken leave of her senses and kissed an Alliance guard.

Deal with it tomorrow.
Once again, I repacked my bag and flicked the touch screen of my communicator. Fitted with offworld roaming up to five universes away, maps, information files and God-only-knew-what else, it had kept me entertained for two days straight trying to figure out what everything did. I was fairly sure it was worth more than our house.

“Hey, Ada,” said Jeth, from down the hall, peering out of his room with his own new communicator in hand. “You figured out the night-vision button yet?”

“There’s night vision?”

“Yep. They think of everything. If ever I want to know the temperature in Alvienne or the population of Klathica’s capital, I know where to look.” Jeth started work at the Alliance tomorrow, too, in the tech department.

“What’re you taking?” I said. “Aside from the Chameleons? Your other projects?”

“Hell no. They’re not getting hold of all my ingenious ideas, little sister. But this–” He waved the communicator–“is awesome. I’ve already thought of a few adaptations. There’s a translator, right, but what if I made it into an earpiece? It’d mean people could communicate offworld if they didn’t speak the same language. There are like fifteen thousand languages logged in here already, I doubt anyone on Earth speaks all of them. I know Klathica has some kind of device, but it involves cutting your head open and–”

“Yeah, we get it, you’re a genius,” said Alber.

I was glad at least one of us felt mildly prepared. But then again, the only jobs I’d ever had were crappy part-time shift work at supermarkets and once, a coffee shop (which had had absolutely nothing to do with the free hot chocolate every hour). As I’d helped Nell at the shelter since I was eight, its absence left a gaping hole that hurt more than I’d expected. I knew the open Passage from Enzar to the New York Alliance would help more than I ever could, but my family was left jobless and sinking into debt, and it had become habit to worry both about them and about the refugees. Being able to help people from my homeworld had made me feel like I had a purpose here on Earth. Stupid thing to think, really. Once I’d passed initiation into the Alliance, the first thing I’d do would be to ask my supervisor if I could help Enzar from here. Even if my new boss was singularly the most terrifying woman I’d ever met.

“Hey,” said Jeth, glancing up from the communicator’s screen. “It’ll be okay, Ada. Just a new start, right? It’s what you always wanted. The Multiverse.”

He was right, of course. For all the years helping refugees through the Passages between the universes, I’d never set foot on another world–at least, not until the craziness a few weeks ago. If I got this job, then I’d be aiming for an ambassadorial position to help people in other worlds. I’d get to do what I’d dreamed of all my life. And yet…

I took in a deep breath. “It’s just hard, you know? I have a feeling at least some of them won’t trust me, after what happened.”

“Then they’re idiots,” said Jeth, putting the communicator in his pocket and crossing the landing to give me a hug. “D’you think I’m not worried about the same thing? My world’s not the Alliance’s friend.”

He had a point. Jeth was originally from Karthos, a world almost as volatile as Enzar, and Nell had adopted him like she had my brother Alber. She’d assembled our small family from broken worlds left to ruin, and since she’d smuggled me out of Enzar as a baby, she’d risked her life to keep the Alliance from finding us.

“You didn’t cause a scene in front of a hundred guards,” I pointed out. “Or break out of jail in the most dramatic way possible.”

“I can think of worse things you’ve done when drunk.”

I gave him a sarcastic look. “Thanks.” My older brother was the sensible one. My younger brother was the recluse. And I’d always been the reckless one. Up until now. For weeks after I’d almost died, I’d been too scared to leave the house, let alone go to Central.

“Hey, just being honest, Ada.”

“Yeah, well, my wild party days are over.” At school, I’d already stood out a mile thanks to my Enzar heritage. If people remembered me as the girl who got shitfaced and danced on the table, I’d rather have that than anyone coming close to guessing I wasn’t from Earth at all. Now it felt like everyone knew. Like walking under a spotlight.

“Quit overthinking things. You’re gonna rock this job.”

A disparaging noise told me Nell had caught the end of our conversation. Her mouth was pressed in a frown as tight as her hair, which was pulled in a bun. Like me, she had the tanned skin and deceptively delicate features of Enzar, but her natural eye colour was pale purple, now hidden by light blue contact lenses.