Page 50 of Katabasis

“Thanks.” Alice lowered her head to sip, but a foul stench hit her nose. She blinked down; thick, black pellets floated at the surface of the water. This was decidedly not Earl Grey. Elspeth was watching her, so she put on a wincing smile and feigned a sip.

“Sugar?” Elspeth asked.

“Go on, then.”

Elspeth reached behind the stove and plinked something tiny into Alice’s cup. Alice stirred, and pretended not to notice it was a pebble. “So then, um—if you don’t mind my asking, what court are you due in for?”

Elspeth blinked at her.

“Sorry,” said Alice. “I suppose that’s rude.”

“Incredibly,” said Elspeth.

“I only think, sometimes, it would be so nice to just pass on and start over.” Alice took another pretend sip of her tea. “I mean, if you didn’t do anything terrible, you might as well stomach it and move on, don’t you think?”

Elspeth’s eyes narrowed. “You two seem very invested in persuading me to give up and die.”

“No, no, I’m just—I’m trying to understand.” Alice’s mouth had gone dry. She swallowed, which did not help. “Seems strange to keep chasing after something that doesn’t exist, when you could just—I mean, when it would be so easy to just go on.”

“I deny the premise, but sure.” Elspeth leaned against the stove. “Something wrong with the tea?”

“No, no, it’s fine—um.” Alice curled her fingers around her cup. She felt dizzy. Oh, she was terrible at this. “So are you—are you close, then? Do you know where it is?”

Elspeth sipped from her own tea, unspeaking.

“What’s stopping you?” Alice pressed. “Is it the Kripkes?”

A strange look came over Elspeth’s face.

Was this the pentagram working? Alice could not tell. She had not played around with the Liar Paradox since her first year, and could not remember acutely what it did to its victims. Was that a glaze over Elspeth’s eyes? Was she dazed?

“We could help,” said Alice. “Me and Peter. If it were the three of us against the Kripkes, they’d never stand a chance. Only you’d have to share with us what you know. If we could just see your notes, I mean...”

Elspeth did not answer. She appeared frozen in place. Her fingers clenched unmoving around her cup of tea, which was pitched forward, dripping, but she did not seem to notice. Her eyes were fixed downward at Archimedes, who now stood, hackles raised, spine curved, glaring up at Alice.

“Baby,” said Elspeth. “What’s wrong?”

Archimedes batted at the mat. Alice’s gut dropped. Archimedes went at the mat like a thing possessed, hissing and scratching at its surface. At last he succeeded in nudging the corner of the mat to the side, revealing a smudge of chalk and several red, glistening drops of blood.

For a long moment Alice and Elspeth blinked at one another. Ever so slowly Elspeth set her cup down on the stove.

A number of possible excuses crossed Alice’s mind. None of them seemed worth the effort.

“Peter, darling.” Elspeth raised her voice. “Why don’t you come up here.”

An excruciating silence. Alice briefly considered running, or fighting—but to where? And with what? She could only clutch her teacup and stand there like a fool. Peter appeared atop the stairs, arm dripping, face pale. He met Alice’s eyes; frantically she shook her head.

“Over there,” Elspeth barked. Peter obeyed, and took a place next to Alice. Side by side they were like chastened children, waiting for punishment. Archimedes perched up on the stove beside Elspeth, glaring righteously through pinprick pupils. Wretched thing , thought Alice; after all we fed you .

Elspeth tapped her spear against the ground. “I think you ought to tell me who you’re here for.”

“We told you,” said Alice. “We’re sojourning—”

“ Liars. ”

Something black seeped into Elspeth’s eyes.

They seemed to rot in her head, whites turning green, then black, years of decay squeezed into seconds.

Suddenly butterflies flew out the sockets; a horde of them, awful rustling violet.

Alice and Peter skittered back, but Elspeth approached, butterflies doubling with every step, until she was not a person but a rustling mass of velvet, dark and reproachful.

Her spear whipped out; the point rested just beneath Peter’s chin.

“Step inside.”

Peter’s neck bobbed. “Why don’t—”

“Step inside, love.”

Peter obeyed.

“You know, it’s not the cruelty that gets me.

” Elspeth pulled out a stick of chalk, dipped it in a pouch at her belt, and fixed it to the end of her staff.

“It’s the disrespect. I’m a Grimes student, you might recall.

” She kicked the mat away and began etching alterations into Peter’s work.

She wrote with furious speed, muttering in Greek as she went along.

This was terrifically impressive magick—very few magicians could inscribe and incant simultaneously.

She is good , Alice thought; she is worthy of Grimes .

“You think I have been down here for decades, dancing with the Kripkes, and I don’t know my way around the goddamn Liar Paradox?

” She closed the circle with a final, vicious stroke.

“The Liar Paradox is child’s play. But advanced magick, kids—that’s making one tell the truth. ”

She banged her staff against the deck. Alice choked. Two invisible hands gripped the sides of her face, wrenching her jaw open.

Elspeth demanded, “What is your purpose?”

The invisible hands pressed harder. Alice gurgled an answer and tried to choke it down.

“Grimes,” Peter gasped.

“Excuse me?”

“Professor Grimes—our advisor, he died, we have to bring him back—”

“ You’re here for Grimes? ”

Elspeth howled then, a howl that doubled, tripled, multiplied into an impossible chorus, a thousand Elspeths shrieking from nowhere.

Tiny black lines spread rapidly across her skin, and then the top layer of her skin seemed to peel away.

Dark fragments coalesced, whirled—but Elspeth was not gone, only shielded now by a horde of butterflies, which swirled agitated around her, whipping up winds, whirling faster and faster until the force of the gale seemed about to rip the ship apart.

She-the-chorus screamed, resounding over the winds.

“You gave up half your lives, and journeyed to the underworld”—the butterflies enveloped her like a shield, encasing her in a semihuman form until she was not a human Shade but some singular-plural god, speaking with a voice like thunder—“for that miserable, godforsaken clown ?”

Elspeth pointed her staff. All at once the butterflies stormed outward.

Alice flung her arms over her head, but it did not matter; the creatures were like a velvet wall, pushing until she and Peter were forced against the prow, bent at the knee, for the circling winds were too strong for them to lift their heads.

“Get off my boat,” said Elspeth.

“Please,” said Peter. “Please don’t—”

“You dare to beg?”

“What would you do?” Alice cried. “If your advisor died? If you were in our position?”

The butterflies parted. Elspeth’s face was again revealed, pale and terrible. “I’d quit , you moron. I’d find another one.” For just a moment her voice was human. Alice thought she heard it break. “I’d do literally anything else .”

“But there is nothing else,” Alice croaked. “Can’t you understand?”

Butterflies closed over Elspeth’s face like a helmet.

The mass surged. Alice writhed, but it was pointless.

She reached for Peter, but the mass pulled them apart.

All she could see or hear was beating black wings and beneath that, a hissing cloud of wrath.

A million bursts of wind carried her up and flung her out.

She flailed suspended in the air, blind and disoriented, before crashing hard against the ground.

By the time the butterflies released her, spiraling away in formation, Elspeth and Archimedes and the Neurath were a dot against the horizon, shooting spitefully out of sight.