Episode 23: Strategizing (Indigo)

Indy tried to shake off the sense of foreboding. Spence, running for governor. Engaged. More kids, suddenly.

He was in so much danger she’d run out of fingernails to worry over and it had only been a half a day.

Zero put his hand on her forearm, reminding her not to chew. She leaned against him and let the contact between their bodies absorb some of her anxiety. She leaned up and kissed him.

“Ready?” she asked, because she wasn’t.

He took her hand. She loved the fit of them, the way his hand enveloped hers. “Ready,” he agreed.

They’d left Camilla in charge back at the apartment, mostly because Spence had moved out and Sawyer wouldn’t listen to Spaden. Camilla, though no more competent at babysitting than Spaden, at least had the benefit of being a decade older than Sawyer, and a girl.

Now they went to talk to Xander. To find out why no one had warned them, what the plans were for protecting Spence, whether this was actually possible.

If it were up to Indigo, he would stay in Elesara and be safe, but he didn’t seem to be interested in safety. Even in Elesara he wanted a job with high risks. It was an important job, a necessary job, but it worried her.

Worried wasn’t the right word. It wrung every part of her essence into coils of anxiety that refused to go away. What could she do? Forbid him to have the life he wanted?

No, he had to be allowed to choose his own way, just as she’d told him at graduation this morning. However risky it was, he wasn’t making foolish decisions. There were reasons behind them.

Zero transported them to the safe room at Xander’s mansion in Sylem, and kissed her one last time before they walked into the house itself. From the hall, Indigo could hear voices coming from the living room; voices and laughter.

She tensed.

Of course it would be easy for Xander to laugh. It wasn’t his son.

She was being harsh. Xander had taken a huge risk supporting Spence today.

Zero squeezed her hand and then shifted so that his arm was around her just before they entered Xander’s living room. “Nice press conference,” he commented to Xander.

It wasn’t just Xander here tonight: Zero’s other two brothers, Dax and Caz, sat on various pieces of furniture. Caz had brought his wife Marion, but Dax was without arm candy tonight. It signaled the obvious, that this was family business and not pleasure.

They sat at their usual couch, near Xander’s extensive liquor cabinet, and Zero served each of them a drink before he sat back on the couch, drink in his right hand while his left snaked around her back, comforting.

Xander grinned once they’d sat.

“He said committee,” he defended. He didn’t sound annoyed, so Indigo relaxed against the couch, into the mutual comfort of Zero.

He took a sip of his drink and joked with Xander, the point they most wanted to know before they got into everything about Spence’s safety. “That’s more than he told us.”
Xander didn’t seem to be fazed by the subtle accusation – question – whatever it was, but his wife Gwen straightened a little.

Indigo liked her, secretly. She just didn’t know how to go about liking her when it was such an obvious change. She hadn’t liked Xander’s last wife at all, and she tolerated Xander.

Gwen seemed different. More of a whole person than a pretty-dress machine.

“Did he tell you about his other job he took today?” Zero asked Xander.

“No?”

Indigo smiled.

She had a strong feeling that Spence had stumbled into the biggest day of his life, not that he’d kept all this planning from any of them.

He was just exceptionally skilled at feigning competence and assurance. Just like Indigo was.

“He’s training for security in Elesara,” she told Xander. “Maybe it will help with this.”

In truth, she intended to seek Konrad out in the morning and urge him to tailor the initial parts of the training towards surviving the election. Konrad wanted a successor; Indigo wanted Spence alive. Spence couldn’t succeed Konrad if he was dead.

“What are the plans for Spence?” Dax asked.

There was a collective silence, where everyone collected their thoughts collectively. Xander tipped his shot glass back and emptied it into his mouth. “I’d like to see him get into office. So far all our governors have been interested in their reputation, not progress. He can do more.”

Right, exactly, because he had nothing to lose.

Sylem would elect a confessed ax-murderer before they would elect a gay man. Maybe Spence should find one to be his lieutenant governor.

Caz leaned forward. Unlike everyone else, he and his wife weren’t drinking. Caz believed a glass of wine around three in the afternoon was healthy for one’s heart but that drinking for pleasure or relaxation was excessive.

He also believed in the power of plaid. He shared that love with Marion, who wore a clashing plaid without a care. It was the kind of thing Acheron would do, with argyle, and it made Indigo feel more at home with Marion.

“I can’t just release everyone from prison on the same day,” Caz warned. “That’s a ton of paperwork, not to mention the personnel required to accomplish it.”

Another difference between the Dells and Sylem was that a prison release in the Dells required no paperwork whatsoever. If the release was ordered or scheduled, it would be immediate, usually with support provided to help the prisoner reestablish some semblance of a life.

In Sylem, it would take weeks to empty the prisons of everyone who had been pardoned. Reams of paperwork and scheduled releases and absolutely no follow-up help to ensure that these people had a chance at successful lives going forward.

Pardoned people meant voters who agreed with Spence, though. She’d pay out of pocket if she had to, to help him get the released prisoners whatever they needed.

Zero had a different thought: “He’s been protesting his teacher’s release for over two years. She could be released first. The press would be all over it and it would buy you time.”

Caz nodded his head.

He was the only judge who mattered in the end. He had the power to override any ruling passed down by any judge in Sylem. If he issued all these pardons, in addition to his regular workload, there would be no way around them.

“I was thinking maybe a lottery system for the rest,” he mused. He stared into a glass of iced apple juice, like a drunk at the altar of a bar. “That way we’re not favoring anyone.”

“I can help with that,” Dax offered with a smile. “And handle representing anyone that feels the need.” He met Zero’s eyes, serious. “I think Spence can pull it off on the other ideas he has.”

“He’ll have enough money,” Xander promised, “with the prisons half empty.”

If Xander meant it, if he really channeled that money into Spence’s campaign, he’d have all the resources he could possibly use.

“He really said committee?” Zero asked. Indigo leaned into him a little more, amused at Spence’s audacity. He may not be Zero’s son by birth, but he was Zero’s in all the ways that mattered.

“I was almost as surprised as you were at his speech,” Xander confirmed. Gwen shared a smile with him and he reached across his lap to hold her hand.

Indigo was dying to know what the inside joke there was. Something, maybe how Xander had responded to Spence’s change in plans?

Xander looked at Zero “Does he want Sam’s assets?”

“Does he need any more assets? I thought the goal was for him to win,” Dax said.

Indigo laughed: He was right, that Spence would be better off not being the rich candidate. Money should be downplayed wherever possible so that he could seem ordinary and relatable.

“Not at the moment,” Zero agreed, without them having to talk it over. Personally, she didn’t want Spence or Spaden to have anything of Sam’s, no matter how justified it was. “Maybe someday. They’re still accruing interest.”

“What kind of budget does he have?” Dax addressed Xander. “He may have a false idea that he can deliver everything at once. We don’t want him in trouble for over-promising.”

“We can meet with him to go over a monthly allocation so that he’s not overextending himself,” Xander told him. He did another shot and looked at Zero and Indigo. “What resources does he have in Elesara?”

Before today, he wouldn’t have had much. Now…

“More than he should,” Zero told him. “He’s engaged to the prince that is second in line.”

“How do the king and queen feel about this?”

“They support it,” Indigo promised Xander. She felt right saying that solely because no one had protested or argued. They hadn’t exactly hugged Spence and promised him anything and everything he could possibly need.

But they supported Spence’s engagement to Acheron, which was significant in its own way. He was family to them now. When he and Acheron married, Spence would become second in line along with Acheron.

Zero poured himself another drink and offered more to Indigo, but she waved it off. She needed to be focused. At just over five feet tall and only 109 lbs, she was better off consuming alcohol in small doses.

Zero drummed his fingers on the side of his glass. “This gives them a closer relationship with the realm, more incentive to aid us.”

Xander grinned. “He was going to just announce he was gay and vanish. I think this is better all around.”

Of course Xander would like the idea of having the support of the Dells. In the realm of Sylem, of which the country and city of Sylem had once been the capital, the nation of Sylem was now an island of anti-Caelum in a sea of pro-Caelum countries.

“It’s more dangerous for him,” Indigo reminded Xander. She tried not to let her annoyance show.

Dax set his glass on the table, too loud. Indigo suspected it was deliberate, for emphasis. “Violence is rising within the communities. There are a dozen small cults rising up. This could solve our problems.”

Xander’s eyes flicked over to Zero’s face and then away, so quickly that Indigo would have missed it if she hadn’t been looking right at him. Her whole body tensed.

Zero hadn’t noticed Xander, but he noticed her tension and shifted her weight more against him. They both looked at Xander, expectant.

He cleared his throat. “Someone tried to get a job with Zach’s serial number today.”

Indigo hadn’t ever known Zach but she knew how much he had mattered to Zero. What losing an infant son had done to him, in the time before she knew him.

“What?” Zero asked. His hand had been against her upper arm, but now his thumb moved back and forth against her skin, etching out an inscrutable pattern.

“Someone in Clovercrest,” Xander explained. “If it comes up again I’ll look into it more.”

Clovercrest was one of the three really bad neighborhoods in the city.

Years ago, decades, in the days before her first marriage, when she was still a princess, she and Drey and Nell had been in another realm, in a horrible neighborhood. They’d eaten at a tiny restaurant pressed between tired houses. She remembered Drey grinning over the greasy menu at her and telling her that the name of the area they were in translated to: Escape if you can.

That was Clovercrest, Laurel Heights, and the Avenue. High crime rates, frequent deaths and disappearances, falling-apart houses.

“You’re not alarmed?” Zero asked Xander.

He shrugged his shoulders. “People steal identities all the time. This guy’s just extra stupid.”

That was likely, too. Probably someone who wanted an anonymous job either because they were hiding from a cult, a family, or a criminal past.

“Let me know,” Zero requested, “but it sounds like it.”

Xander assured them he’d bring the guy in if he caught him, which sounded to Indigo like he wasn’t going to be proactive about finding the guy.

  “Anything else?” Dax asked, after a silence.

“What’s the plan if he loses?” Xander asked. “I don’t think it’s likely, but we need a plan.”

“Let him run off to Elesara,” Zero suggested. “If things get bad, we all have apartments in the Dells.”

“Will it get that bad?” Indigo asked all of them.

Despite that it was the origin realm of her body, it wasn’t her home realm. She’d lived almost fifteen hundred years in her old body, always in Elesara. It was disorienting to her the way people with shorter lifespans planned and plotted. Everything seemed to move faster.

The result was that she always expected a gradual tide and Sylem frequently provided a tsunami. People who expected to die in four to six decades tended to be more motivated for change than people who were going to die in six to eight millennia.

She added to her question, “How much is genuine and how much is people hiding what they really think?” If the majority of people only pretended to have a problem with homosexuals in order to avoid trouble, the election would be easy.

“I don’t think anyone can guess,” Dax said. “It will be an undesired surprise.”

It wouldn’t be a surprise if they were talking about it, planning for it. They couldn’t plan for everything, but they could predict and make a plan for every contingency.

Xander glanced at Gwen before he shared, “We’re about to have a lot more people in the job market too, with the same number of jobs. That won’t be popular.”

So Xander did realize the problem that faced them. She wondered, from that glance, if Gwen had been the one to point it out to him.

Zero shrugged this time. He almost seemed amused, like this was an avoidable problem. “So make jobs,” he said.

Indigo agreed.

Xander laughed. “We suddenly need more security personnel.”

“On the plus side, they won’t need much training and they have incentive to do well.” Zero pointed out, partly to Indigo.

It was funny, imagining Spence surrounded by an army of gay bodyguards he’d freed from the prisons just by running for office.

“We may need more gardeners and gardens too,” Dax said.

Indigo studied him, trying to figure out what that comment meant, but she couldn’t make sense of it. Maybe he thought helping the lower classes should include beautification of the neighborhoods.

Another man walked into the room. He was taller than any of his sons, lanky but tough. Indigo fought an eye-roll as the man said, “Are you prepared for the consequences of your actions today, Xander?” 

He stepped further into the room and helped himself to an entire bottle of firewhiskey. He sat in the stately armchair beside the fire and regarded the room with a level gaze. “Good evening Gwen, Indigo, and Marion. Boys.” He crossed his legs and took a sip from the bottle. “Ulysses will strike.”

Caz straightened his tie. “What makes you so sure?”

“He yielded my territory. Why do you think he’s unrelenting here?”

There were dozens of theories about that. This was the capital, a book had disappeared and the Caelum wanted it back. There were rumors about a treasure within Sylem, which the Caelum protected. Ulysses’ wife, Lilla, was the mother to all four boys, so it could have been down to personal vendetta.

Whatever it was, she liked Xander’s opinion best: “Because he’s an asshole,” Xander stated.

“Because,” their dad said, dramatic, “his sister is in your jail. And about to be released.”

Indigo shared a half-smile with Zero. Even the families that tried to seem the most pure weren’t immune. Spence’s efforts, if they worked, could help people no one perceived as victims, like Zero’s step-aunt apparently was.

“Can she be moved out of realm or will she protest that?” Xander asked.

Oh no. They weren’t bringing any unnecessary Sylem problems into the Dells just to make Xander’s life easier.

“You’ll have to ask her,” Zero’s dad said in a lofty tone. He took another long swig from the bottle.

“What else?” Xander all but snapped at his dad.

Caz ran his hands down his face. It stretched his lower eyelids in a grotesque way, the sort of thing Sawyer would do at the dinner table to annoy Mallory. “Some of the people imprisoned for being gay or lesbian are criminals and that was the only thing we can get them for. There will be an increase in crime.”

Some of them were probably criminals because they were gay and lesbian and they couldn’t find jobs. Indigo doubted the increase in crime would be significant. Hungry people stole food to survive, clothes to keep warm. She doubted there were too many criminal masterminds about to be released.

“You can all thank Spence when this implodes,” Dax muttered. He stood up, probably eager to get away from his dad. “I’m going to get resources ready.”

Caz stood too, and offered his hand to Marion. “I’ll be up late reviewing cases to see if there are other crimes we can hold any of them for.”

“In short,” Indigo summarized, feeling the weight of this more as each discussion point came up, “None of us are sleeping tonight?”

“I will,” Xander joked.

Zero pressed her against him and teased, “Why won’t you? We’re staying in the Dells tonight.”

And Spence would be back here tomorrow or the next day, ready to campaign.

She decided to smile her way through it. She couldn’t change it, so she’d make it enjoyable. “I always thought Sawyer or Camilla would be the biggest source of stress in our personal lives.”

“Don’t discount Sawyer yet,” Zero mused.

“What’s he going to do,” she joked, “turn himself into a frog and run for president?”

Zero laughed, warm and rumbly beside her. Yes, laughter was the way to go. It would help both of them.

“Before I go,” Caz said, “What are we doing about Clovercrest and Laurel Heights and the Avenue?”

“What about them?” Xander said, almost a sigh more than words.

“You and Spence just promised them change. I doubt they’ll welcome him with open arms.”

Back to the safety issue. Zero managed to be calmer about it than she was, probably because he knew which of the important spells to teach Spence so that he could protect himself.

“Why don’t we see what Spence does with them?” he suggested to Caz.

“Yes,” Xander agreed, with Zero not with Caz. “The tricky part is going to be keeping security near him without it being obvious. Even plain clothes won’t work; those people all know each other.”

“We’ll handle it,” Zero assured the room, although Indigo suspected she was mostly assuring her. “Fairies can glamour themselves and won’t be recognized.”

She knew Zero also probably planned to help any security guards be magically uninteresting to people who encountered them. Zero sometimes helped Konrad train soldiers to resist that magic, and Indigo had seen the way their eyes and minds seemed to gloss over the protected soldiers.

“I’ll talk to Konrad in the morning,” she added, partly for Xander and partly so that Zero knew she agreed with his plan. “If Ach is going to be here, he’ll want security anyway. We just have to make him think it’s his idea and not us asking.”

“Tell Spence I wish him luck,” Dax said from the doorway, before he turned and walked toward the safe room.

“We all do,” Caz said, and Marion nodded her head in agreement.

That. Right there, that was why Indigo hadn’t fully engaged with Gwen yet even though she was curious. When they had these family meetings, Marion and Gwen hardly ever spoke. It was creepy.

Indigo liked a woman who spoke her mind, the end.

Aadya, Drella, Rylena, Giana…fabulous, strong-willed women who knew when to speak up and when to hold their tongues. They didn’t just bow to the minds of their husbands the way Marion and Gwen seemed to.

“Should we mobilize?” Caz asked his dad. “Or what?”

The man handed Indigo a graduation gift for Spence and stood up. “Be prepared. And whatever you do, don’t join his sister for a tea party, or trust her.”

“No,” Xander nodded his head. “We’ll make a big show of releasing her, since he’ll be pissed and assume we did either way, and then she can join Sam.”

“I wouldn’t release her, personally,” their dad warned again. “Have a good night.”

“Not even for show?” Xander pressed.

“Do you want to be part of the show?”

Indigo shivered against Zero. Their family’s last encounter with the Caelum had almost cost her and Zero their lives, and it had resulted in Spaden. Spaden made the whole thing worth it, in the end, but that didn’t mean she craved another run-in.

“Got it,” Xander said.

Zero stood, pulling Indigo up with him. “Thank you for helping Spence,” he said to Xander.

They walked into the hallway and back through the safe room to transport to the conference room in the Dells.

The Dells.

It wasn’t even the right name for them. Drey had managed to change history, his and Nell’s little joke. The Dells used to be called Maelmaan, for the dragon king Maelchor. When the dragon line had split millennia ago, people had begun referring to them as the Dels – the brothers, one for each twin who claimed to be rightful heir.

Drey and Nell, one night, and gone through and carefully added script letter l’s to all the old scrolls and texts. At the end of one, a scroll with several spare inches at the end, they’d added a story about the farmer who lived in the Dells.

There were even texts, more recent, which debated the theological significance of the cheese which stood alone.

Very few knew the truth, but it was always an entertaining Maelvish church service on the day those readings came up. A shared joke with Nell, a day to remember their lost family.

And every time she thought the name, a small reminder to find humor in everything.

She leaned against Zero as they walked. Whatever came, she knew they could get through it, together.

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