Keys to the Kingdom

[Nesrin Aziz]

Nesrin asked the question, phrased that particular way – what, not who – because of her strange encounter: the mixed pronouns, the gravelly voice, the robotic emptiness when she’d first found him stood against the wall. Should Zigzag even reply, she did not expect anything beyond a reiteration of his warning, or maybe something so simple as a curt: he is the Emissary. Instead her eyes bounced in surprise over words like host and gods and worship. She glanced to where the puzzle box lay discarded amidst the blankets. It occurred to her she could just give it to Balthazar, hide behind the protection of the Asquith name. His family had contacts, and they’d be particularly interested in a god’s secrets. But it meant revealing things about herself she’d rather even Zar didn’t know.

She slipped off the bed to fix herself a drink while she thought about it. The warning reverberated inside, spiking ice in her veins and trembling her hands, but there was something harder inside too. She was a survivor, and a self-sufficient loner for all she used the people around her. She could ask Zigzag what the key actually was. Maybe he’d even answer in a bid to urge her to see sense. But she didn’t. Instead she was thinking about how the Emissary had shrugged her control off and walked away when he should have followed.

She’d not had the paternity test yet, which meant Nesrin Aziz was still nothing more than a nobody who’d existed within the Custody for only a handful of years. Despite the lengths she went to to obscure her identity, it wasn’t something she was worried about being discovered – it was just another construct after all. Her mother had never registered her birth in Cairo, and Nesrin didn’t even know if her name was the one she had been given, or was just something used by the man who raised her. The woman she was now (legally speaking) was entirely built by the Asquiths, including the date they chose for her birthday.

So whatever the m’Antinomian managed to untangle from her presence on the dark web, the chances of any of them finding her in the flesh were slim, even if Zigzag betrayed what he knew – voluntarily or otherwise. Nesrin took a sip of her drink and rolled the cool glass against her lip as she wandered the darkened apartment. She could offer to return this key, and hope for clemency – she could certainly play the game of good little girl, it wasn’t new – but a blessing of will sounded frankly unsettling. Especially when she remembered the way the Emissary had stroked her arm, not in flirtation, but in some kind of consideration. That felt especially sinister now. And if the Emissary couldn’t be an ally who’d dance to her tune when she needed him to, he was no use to her at all.

But maybe his key could be used to flush new allies out.

“Sorry, Zigzag. But fuck your gods,” she murmured to herself as she climbed back amongst the cushions. Ice clinked in her glass. She grabbed her wallet and set to work.