From the Ashes of Victory: The Complete Series, page 127
part #0 of From the Ashes of Victory Series
It was the spectre of that happening again that had persuaded the Council to let Niamh off the leash, doing double duty in protecting witches and stamping out the greatest concentration of those who would have seen a repeat of the Great War in the name of 'doing the job properly' this time.
EVE had helped keep the peace by waging a silent war.
There might be blood on Katya's hands, but only because they had been soaked in her own first. She had been powerless then.
She was powerless no more.
Her power, EVE's power, was to make a difference, and as long as she wielded it, she would not allow anyone to suffer as she had. As they all had. EVE had been founded by survivors, those who had been transformed by their experiences and emerged from them stronger, with a ferocious, unshakable will to see that they not be repeated.
But if the cost was Millie's life, could Katya look Elise in the face when she told her? Convince her it had all been worth it? That all those witches, and the land in which she had been born were safe, but that her heart was the price?
Grey tendrils crawled from Katya's nostrils and stung her eyes as she pictured looking into the eyes of someone who had lost everything once and watched as it happened again. As she took it.
But that was part of Katya's job. It was one of the responsibilities Selene had placed on her and Vita's shoulders. And now there were two dozen more responsibilities of their own making arriving in just a few days.
Like Emma.
What if something happened to her?
Elise would be devastated if something happened to Millie. She would mourn, she would grieve, but how would 'Aunt Vickie' respond? They would be lucky if it was Aunt Vickie. More likely it would be the Raven. If that were the case, words like 'wrath' and 'blight' were too weak for the kind of hell that could be unleashed by someone who could warp the laws of physics on a whim. She could turn the world itself on whoever earned her ire, and there would be no-one to stop her.
Anyone who might be able to wouldn't want to try.
EVE was the single greatest concentration of magical strength in history that they knew of, and it had most likely only stayed that way because nobody actually understood what it meant. By this point, some believed Katya alone could lay waste to a city, or at least a good portion of one. She tried very, very hard not to think about if she was among them.
With her letter finished, Katya realised she was ruminating herself into a place she didn't want to be, and cast a look at the clock to see if it would be able to mount a rescue.
She was in luck.
It was time to get ready.
As London was splintered by the creeping shadows of dusk, Victoria looked out from a 15th floor restaurant and noted how much the city had changed since the last time she'd been. From this high, the evolution that had occurred in Britain's capital was marked.
The skyline had many taller peaks in it, some of the new buildings dizzyingly so. The streets had all been paved, and Victoria hadn't seen a single horse that didn't have a policeman atop it. Even the smell was different. It was more industrial than before, with exhaust fumes from fleets of motorised taxis and busses replacing those produced by animals and poorly-maintained sewage lines. Even the Thames was cleaner; still brown, it didn't look quite as… soupy as she remembered.
Sequestered as she had been, Victoria had all but missed the larger changes that had effected such differences, many of which she had fervently worked for most of her life. First total suffrage, then the passage of the 'Equal Work, Equal Pay' laws that had finally levelled the playing field for women in the workplace. When the two wealthiest people in Britain were women, and had got that way employing only women, the arguments against bringing the law in line with that success had died long overdue deaths, resulting in a stronger, more dynamic economy bursting with the innovation that was naturally derived from fierce, honest competition.
From her 15-story perch, Victoria watched in real time the beating of what was once again the financial heart of the world. Far below, people moved with alacrity, like they had somewhere to be, rather than trying to avoid being somewhere they would rather not. Lorries laden with goods from every corner of the world motored every which way. The bright lights of countless theatres and movie houses full to bursting, their patrons harangued by newsagents to buy the evening edition while healthy, happy children weaved and dodged through them all, darting to and fro in games that only they understood the rules to.
Eleven years and a transformed economy on from the end of the Great War, London had a different energy than Victoria had ever encountered. The pall that used to lay so heavily as to be suffocating had been somehow been transmuted into work, as though the entire country was making up for lost time—as though everyone, like Victoria, knew how close they had come to ruin, and were bound and determined not to let it happen again.
"You look wistful," Katya said as she poured a rather lovely-smelling Schiava for both of them.
"I sometimes feel as though I was asleep for eight years. The world changed all around me and I barely noticed," Victoria said.
Katya followed her eye out the window. "I think everyone feels that way. Cheers."
"Cheers," Victoria said, and took a sip. The wine was light-bodied and sweet without being cloying or overpowering, with hints of raspberry. She savoured it before swallowing. "Good choice."
"A 1919. I thought it appropriate."
"Indeed." Victoria cast her gaze outside again into the dying sun, slowly reddening as it impaled itself on the spire of a building that hadn't been there a year ago. "It's only going to get faster, isn't it?"
"I'd've thought you would be in favour of that," Katya said.
"I am. Things have gotten better for us." Victoria picked up the bottle of wine and considered the date on it. "We couldn't vote, couldn't practice magic publicly, employment prospects dim. What I mean is… us. Ivy and Niamh talk about how time seems to speed up as you get older. Every day is a smaller and smaller percentage of your life, so they seem to compress and accumulate faster. It becomes impossible to keep up." She nodded out the window.
"But the world itself is changing even more quickly. Since the Industrial Revolution, but especially since the war, it's as though the world's brakes have been severed and we're all careening downhill. It was a notable occasion when the old house got a telephone. The new one has one on every floor, as well as a radio. There's a refrigerator in the kitchen, along with a host of other electrical appliances I can't fathom the use of. The only candles we have now are decorative. Motion pictures have sound now. And those are just frivolities. The things that are coming…" Victoria cut herself off and shook her head, trying to look more at a loss than like she had almost said something she shouldn't have.
"Few embody change more than you, Doctor Ravenwood," Katya said.
"The irony is not lost on me. I've fought against the status quo my entire life, tried to force change where it refused to happen. But I wasn't the only one. I barely recognise Alex anymore, and Emma…"
In Victoria's mind, she was still a 12-year-old girl subjected to monstrous injustice yet still able to gawk wide-eyed and open-mouthed in abject wonder at seeing her first witchlight. Now she was going to learn to make them herself, and then voluntarily step back into the maw of a place Victoria still had nightmares about in order to help make it better. Emma chose to do that, because she was a grown woman capable of making that choice, one made in part because of Victoria.
Your choices are your immortality, Raven of the wood; words that had echoed in Victoria's mind since she'd heard them ten years earlier. She had never forgotten them, nor the context in which they were spoken. How adaptable they were proving to be was not something she had expected.
She took another sip of wine. "Katya, I've been meaning to speak to you about something. Why have you not been practicing?"
Katya swallowed her entire mouthful in one gulp, eyes instantly watering as she tried not to choke. "I have been," she managed.
"I'm not talking about lighting cigarettes."
"You've just gotten a lot stronger," Katya said to the window.
"Because I practiced. The new training hall is not called that for the sake of it. A Manifested witch must train her magic as much as her body. More so. And more so us, Katya. I've heeded the words warning of how much a danger we can be to ourselves. I remember you being horrified at what happened to me at the Circus and Versailles, so I wonder why you have not shown the same concern for yourself." Victoria didn't bother to make it a question.
"I do enough. I've focussed on control, not power," Katya said as a miniature sun came to earth in her palm. Pure white arcane fire, so bright as to be painful to look at directly, twisted and morphed until it resolved into the shape of a bird. Feathers of flame trailed from its wings and tail as it leapt into the air only to immediately evaporate into a roiling column of boiling air. The candle flickered as cooler air rushed in to funnel upwards into the vacuum-like low pressure it left behind.
"All well and good," Victoria said, and let loose a trickle of will and magic.
With a start and a frantic look about, Katya found herself floating several inches above the floor, her legs kicking empty air as she tried to steady herself.
In another pulse of power, the wine, ice bucket, glasses and candle all vanished through the surface of the table, stopping an inch from the ground to hover as steadily as Katya was.
"Put me down, you're making a scene," she said testily.
Without so much as a glance at the other patrons, Victoria set everything (and everyone) back the way the were. She ignored the smattering of applause that followed.
"Your point?" Katya asked with a tight smile for the table next to them, smoothing out her clothing and settling her necklace until it lay just so again.
"Catching Juno almost killed me," Victoria stated flatly. "That was power, not finesse. It was an ugly, brute use of my Manifest that I have thankfully never had to repeat. But always in the back of my mind is the knowledge that I may have to one day. I spent years afterwards documenting every physical response I had to my magic and sharing all of it with Elise. She advised strengthening myself, honing the synergy of my magic and body so that I might safely and more effectively make use of my gift. To whit," Victoria said, and exerted her Manifest again.
All ambient noise suddenly ceased, as if a giant glass lid had been set over their table.
"What did you do?" Katya asked as she looked about. No-one around them seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary.
"Sound is transmitted by the vibration and collision of air molecules. I've created a micro-vacuum shell around us that will do neither. Sound waves are reflecting off of it from either side, so our conversation is now completely private while allowing us to continue enjoying the view. A result of practice and experimentation," Victoria said.
Katya looked up at the faint sheen surrounding them, but appeared less impressed now that it had ramifications beyond its novelty. "And?"
"You have done neither."
Katya opened her mouth to protest, but Victoria cut her off.
"I don't need Sveta's gift to know you're about to lie to me. You haven't, Katya. Elise told me. Why not?"
"This isn't the place. I thought we were to enjoy tonight as friends."
"I'm asking because I'm your friend. I care for no-one more than you, and since you have kept your reasoning from everyone else, perhaps you could tell me and we could address it," Victoria said. "I had thought that you would want to talk about it, that a change of setting might make you more amiable. Yet you remain recalcitrant. When have we ever kept anything from one another?"
"When we met," Katya said with a verbal sulk.
"If you would prefer being flippant to addressing your closest friend's earnest concern, then perhaps we should make our way to the theatre now? Beat the crowds?"
The look that passed over Katya's face was aimed entirely inward, and Victoria took no joy in having been the one to cause it. But she recognised it for what it was, and poured Katya another glass of wine.
"Thank you," the Russian said. She spun the stem in her fingers a few times before speaking again. "Vita, the truth is… I have no interest in becoming like you."
Victoria leaned forward, more intrigued than hurt by such blunt language. "What do you mean?"
"My Manifest will not be improved with strength. Only control." Katya sipped at her wine. "You and I have much in common magically, but we are not identical. Yes, I have nearly lost you twice to your power, but mine has never given me so much as a nosebleed. I understand the concerns you and Elise have. But quite frankly, you don't understand."
"Enlighten me."
Katya set down her wine glass and snapped her fingers to produce a white flame no bigger than the one dancing atop the candle. Without perceptible effort, it morphed into the letter 'V'. Then 'I' and so on, spelling out both of their names as quickly as it would have done had it been Morse code. "You use magic to force the natural world to behave unnaturally. That takes finesse, yes, but also raw power, as you've shown. This is finesse, repetition and focus. Like Elise and Millie. Do you harangue them about practicing?"
"But your flames are purely arcane. That is raw magical energy you are wielding, and doing so could have unintended physiological effects."
"Only if I overexert myself, the same as you. But this…" white fire burned in rings of icy blue that narrowed in uncooperative memory, "oh, what was the other word you used for it?"
"Plasma."
"Plasma, yes," Katya said, "doesn't require exertion. Yours does. You've sent LAC leaps and bounds ahead of their competition, re-shaped the face of physics and earned your doctorate through your skill with it. Raw power with me doesn't result in accolades and titles, it results in opening a door to the surface of the sun. A few years ago, you gave me a book on thermodynamics for my birthday—"
Victoria flushed. "I did. It was at the height of my academic tunnel vision, and I'd like to take the opportunity to ap-"
"I read it. The table of melting temperatures gave me pause, and made me think. Really think. And I had to ask myself: what use is being able to melt lead outside of a foundry? Liquid rock should only be found in volcanoes. There is no point in building my strength, even if I wanted to," Katya said.
"Until the day you need to melt rock."
"I already can. If things have gone so badly as to need more than that, then I don't know that I could save the situation."
"The skin of a tank, then? A battleship?"
Katya blanched. Quite a sight, given how pale she was. "You think I'm going to face down a battleship? I know you are one given to thought experiments, but that's a bit much, don't you think?"
"I never thought I would have to learn to walk through walls to escape from a mental institution until I did it. That almost killed me, too. I had to learn my lesson more than once. You think that lifting my trunk was nothing? You're right. It was nothing. I could do it in my sleep. I may do actually, so you might want to keep a helmet by your bed," Victoria said, and took another sip of wine to hide the fact she wasn't smiling.
"You're joking."
"I want to be. But that's only because I embraced the problem. I like problems. They invite solutions. And solutions require inventiveness, creativity and discovery. Growth."
"Spoken like a born scientist."
"Guilty. But when it comes to magic, I have to be more than that. A witch is nothing without her feelings, correct? So when your closest friend and your doctor are telling you the same thing, how do you feel?"
Katya looked down into her glass, but found only herself looking back. "Like you aren't listening."
"I'm concerned. That doesn't mean—"
"Yes it does, Vita. You've spent the last eight years on the defensive, hunkered down against assault from every side, alone. You, like Millie, have essentially spent your time away at war." Katya met Victoria's perturbed gaze easily and held it. "While I have spent it forging peace. I've been talking, building alliances, shoring up relationships, reaching out and embracing… I don't care about power. You just said it: 'I have to be more than that.' And I am. Look at everything I've accomplished without needing more than a superficial amount of magic. I am my grandmother's granddaughter, yes, but also my father's daughter, which means I am a witch and a businesswoman, just as you are a witch and a scientist. And now, headmistress to two dozen young, impressionable girls who know nothing about being any of those things. I am an example, and so are you. Emma doesn't look up to you simply because you can walk through walls, and I don't love you just because you can stop bullets. Millie and Elise became like family to you before you even knew what a Manifest was."
Victoria swallowed the last of her wine, grimacing as the sweetness faded, leaving only the burning trail of alcohol. "I apologise. Our thinking has grown farther apart than I'd realised, and I imposed my own fears and preconceptions on you. I will endeavour to be a better listener in future."
"Not at all. You've only been home for a day. We'll see how you do in a week's time," Katya said with her brilliant smile.
A smile that, for the first time, made warmth creep under Victoria's collar. It was effortlessly charming, but never before had Victoria felt so genuinely… charmed. Perhaps it was just their time apart, and how much she had missed seeing it that caused such a curious effect, but her response was autonomic, independent of her conscious feelings. Perhaps, after months away, she had simply lost her immunity and become as susceptible as everyone else to how disarming Katya could be.
Or perhaps more so, as Victoria found herself not only disarmed, but disarmoured, as well. The shell she had spent the last eight years constructing around herself was being ablated away under the gaze of the Firebird, and Victoria, to her own surprise, allowed it. To show vulnerability in male-dominated academia was death, but to do anything else for Katya would be a lie.
