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Part 6-8: Audience
We all sat around the patio set in the courtyard lawn, Fergus and The Minder patient as I tried to sprawl comfortably and enjoy the scent of the sharp, black tea our host had prepared. The trip through the white book had been stinky. Or maybe it was more accurate to say smelly, in a trippy way.
A hundred pungent scents had billowed through my face, nesting in the deep recesses of my tongue and throat, simultaneous in their sweetness, tartness, fullness, everythingness. It was as if someone had ground up every flavoured jelly bean, even the “fun” ones with bad flavours, mixed it all into an aersol, added salt for more flavour, and blew the whole thing into my head.
It technically went away as soon as we reached Fort Ticktock, but the experience was fresh enough that its mental smellprint remained stamped into my scenes, hence the blessed tea aromatherapy.
“How are your maladies, Fergus?” asked The Minder. “Have they progressed?”
“Um. Faces are still on leave,” he said. “But you know, other than that, it’s been kinda chill in the area of spirit vision or whatever you cats spiked me with.”
“Mm. I suspect The Collector’s weakened state is much to do with that outcome. You all performed handsomely in the make-up test. We were both impressed!”
“I want that shit on my transcript,” I said. The chair was so comfy. I wondered if we might be allowed to nap here, but then the idea of what dreams might stalk this extra-dimensional wacko world jolted me to the right side of consciousness.
“It has been duly noted, of that you may be certain,” said The Minder.
“Yo, do you guys transfer credits?” asked Fergus. “Like, say we wanted to take a psych course, would this count towards it or…?”
I chuckled into my tea as The Minder regarded Fergus with lofty eyebrows.
“An inside joke, by my measure?” ventured The Minder.
“Just seeing if you had an answer to everything,” said Fergus, folding his arms and leaning back.
“I’d hope he does, at least for what we really need to talk about,” I said. I put down the cup, still not entirely confident I could drink it and suffer no ill effects. “We have a problem.”
I gave The Minder a selective account of our new, shadowy agent friends. I’d been debating telling him at all, in case the feds were actually on our side, but the ruthlessness of the Terradyne woman made me suspect that even if she was anti-Eden, and anti-midnight, that our lives meant tremendously little to her. Plus, we still had to try to get Dack out. That screw up was on me and Deluxe.
He listened without interrupting. When I was done, he seemed to think on it for some time, leaning forward with his elbow on his knees, hands dangling, his big, ludicrous top hat tilted forward as he studied the ground.
Fergus and I exchanged quizzical glances.
“Well,” said The Minder.
“Quite a zesty pickle, right?” said Fergus.
“It seems a matter well worth deeper consideration,” he agreed. “I need to take you both on a small journey. Conveniently, this jaunt was already on the curriculum timetable for this visit.”
“Where?” I said, thinking of the hazy image of the hamlet visible from the top of The Jailer’s tower. I wasn’t sure how keen I was to explore the lands outside of the fake kingdom.
“Not far,” said The Minder, and gestured up over his shoulder. The air wavered, and the hulking mass of the castle proper resolved into existence, like we’d seen from the top of the tower before. “I’d offer to walk and give you a tour of the interior, but I’m afraid to say that the blueprint’s run fearfully low on spatiality over the past eon or so.”
He clambered up onto the low table in the middle of the set, and the teapot fuzzed away as he did. A long arm reached out to both of us, palm upturned.
“You’ve gotten the hang of getting to places without going there—take a hand,” he said.
When we both hesitated, he huffed a little and rolled his eyes. Eight fingers twitched in little come-hither motions.
“Is this going to melt my brain?” I said, lifting a hand. The only other time I’d ever touched the bugger was when I first met him and clocked him in the chest, and I think I’d even done that through a stool top.
“Alena, if my master plan culminated in the gripping of your palm I’d say I’ve done a terrifically inefficient job at engineering and arriving at it, wouldn’t you say?”
“One might say overly theatrical, too.” I spurted a little raspberry at him then grabbed his hand. It felt like a hand. I did not implode.
The Minder looked over at Fergus.
“Ah what the hell, put ‘er there ol’ buddy ol’ pal!” Fergus engaged our host in an exaggerated handshake, and as the three us swayed from the force of it, the bleak outdoorsy view of the lawn and curved walls snapped away.
We were in a long room with a high, vaulted ceiling and thin, stained glass windows that ran right up both sides, all robin’s egg blue. The end of the room was a stepped riser, and in the middle of the riser perched a luxurious chair with an enormous back.
Throne room.
And on the stairs, about half way up and to the right of the royal seat, lay a human figure made of shimmering blue light, trailing smoke like liquid nitrogen, faceless as it always was.
“Is that…?” said Fergus.
“Eden,” I said.
“Come,” said The Minder, releasing our hands. “We’ve an audience with The Collector.”
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