Chapter 8
Chapter
Eight
The Assistant did not look back, though he felt the woman’s gaze press between his shoulder blades. It spread across him like ivy tendrils, a tickling itch that burrowed into bark and bone.
The hallway narrowed behind him. Greymarket liked to shift when it was watching, and lately the building had grown particularly interested in Marigold Flynn.
He could not blame it. She glittered. She interrupted. She carved out space in rooms where she wasn’t meant to be and then filled them completely. She charmed like it was a second language, a layer of defense disguised as warmth and wit.
He hated the practiced performance he saw in her. Not for its brazenness, not only because he recognized armor stretched over a soft interior, but because something sap-deep in him longed to see her without it.
And that unsettled him, because he was not made to feel. He was Splice, a graft shaped to serve the will of something older than cities. His germination had been seeded with precision, sung into form beneath the canopy of Mycor’s breath.
The Thornfather—known to others as a god, to him only as Mycor—wasn’t a father, nor a brother. They were not kin as humans meant it. They were branches from the same trunk: separate but joined, distinct yet communal, each grown to serve a purpose the other could not.
Splice’s thoughts ran in braided strands. He did not bother to separate which belonged to him and which belonged to Mycor. Their link was phloem and fiber, deeper than speech, stronger than emotion.
They had seen so much together. When the world still trembled with gods in every grove, Mycor had walked as an avatar of life, crowned in antlers and wreathed in green. Always, he returned when the land grew restless, when someone forgot that the land remembers.
Splice remembered the most recent time Mycor had stirred.
Decades ago, when the city first began tearing at its borders, carving concrete scars and trying to forget its forests.
The land had cried out then, raw and unquiet.
Mycor had answered, risen, and rooted himself in place.
And Splice, his graft, had moved where Mycor could not.
When the bindings were set, Mycor returned to slumber.
But Splice did not sleep. He carried out what had been sung into him, tracing the grooves of his purpose like water through stone.
For days, years, decades, he moved without recognition, without question, without remembering.
The work was done, though he could not have said why or for whom.
He was a vessel on autopilot, a witness without memory, a shadow cast by a sleeping tree.
That was what he was made to be. A graft, not a man. Not a creature who lingered in stairwells, disoriented by the glance of a woman who glittered too brightly.
The stairwell gave way to stillness as Splice entered the atrium.
Greymarket had done its best to make the space presentable for his god: marble planters, skylights, a koi pond ringed with curated ferns.
But the koi were long gone, and the pond was now a basin of black water, reflecting nothing.
The ferns had grown too lush, too symmetrical, as though Greymarket didn’t quite understand what a forest was meant to look like.
Shadows gathered in their roots, stubborn and thick.
Mycor sat at the far edge of the water, trailing his rootlike fingers across its surface as if reading the language of ripples.
He was tall, naked, his form a composite of living matter: grass-green, bark-brown, stone-grey.
Moss crept in a lattice across his hunched shoulders, vines cascading from his head like a mantle.
Where his body touched the marble, the stone darkened, veins spreading outward as if it too were growing.
“Mycor,” Splice breathed, kneeling.
“My Splice,” the god intoned, face shifting between bark and shadow, lichen and moss. A smile tugged at the uncanny planes of his visage. “Were you successful?”
Splice bowed his head. “I traced the distortion south of the fen. There was a surge in the undergrowth, but it corrected itself three days ago. No ruptures.”
“No rot?” Mycor asked softly.
“None.” Splice hesitated. “If that was the disturbance that woke you, it left no trace.”
Mycor turned back to the water, vines whispering across his shoulders. “Then it was not the cause.”
“No,” Splice agreed. “It was not.”
The god’s broad shoulders slumped a fraction. Splice’s heartwood twisted.
It had not been the sinkhole collapse whispered about in council minutes.
Not the leyline pulse scholars had sworn was a rupture.
Not the drought in the Glassgrove, nor the failed tether in the north hollow.
Each rumor had seemed a reason, a call, an opportunity to set things right.
And each time, the trail led nowhere. No cause. No cure. Only his god, still awake.
Mycor lifted his hand from the pond. Water trailed from his fingers, slow and dark, like sap from a wounded trunk.
“My roots ache, Splice,” he said softly. “Every time we seek the source, it is a false trail. And I wither a little more each time.”
“You have been awake longer than this before,” Splice rushed to say. “It has been half a year, yes. But when the droughts split the western groves, you did not sleep for many months more.”
What he did not say—what neither of them said—was the difference. Back then, the land had screamed and Mycor had answered. This time, there had been no scream. Only stillness that became more and more suffocating with each passing day.
“I remember.” Mycor’s voice was thick, as though dragged up from deep soil. “The worms surfaced and suffocated. The trees wept for weeks. Even the stones curled in on themselves.”
Splice remained kneeling, gaze fixed on the slow movement of his god’s hand through the water. Through the tether they shared, he felt the unease. The fatigue. The ache beneath Mycor’s calm.
The thought stuck like a splinter: What happens if we can’t find your reason for waking?
Was that even possible? Could a god wake for no reason? Could he—fail to wake properly? Could he—?
Splice cut the thought short, clenching his jaw so hard it ached. No. That was not the shape of things. Gods did not die. Mycor was not dying. Of course not.
There was a reason. There had to be. They just hadn’t uncovered it yet.
“I will continue searching,” he said quickly, the words tumbling, his voice wavering. “There is still much to uncover. I will find it. Whatever it is… I shall keep looking.”
The god only watched the water, fingers trailing once more through the surface, slower now. Then, finally, he nodded.
Splice didn’t wait for more. He rose in a jolt, bowed stiffly, and fled. His footsteps struck too loud against the marble, each one a hammer-blow betraying his haste. The sconces along the corridor guttered violently as he passed, as though Greymarket itself disapproved of his retreat.
But he had to get out. He had to get away.
His heartwood thudded too hard, breath scraping shallow. The more he tried to steady himself, the more he slipped. Thoughts scattered, jagged and useless: What if we never find the cause? What if he stays waking, withering, until—
By the time he reached the stairwell, he was trembling. Up, up, up—one flight, two, five, ten—at last, he shoved open the iron-framed door to the rooftop garden and staggered into the light.
At once, the world softened. The air was warm, sun-steeped and rich with green and sweet loam and the faint thrum of chlorophyll in motion.
Splice exhaled, long and deep, his breath shuddering out of him, and felt his chest loosen.
The garden pulsed with life. Ferns twisted lazily along the stone planters, their fronds humming just below hearing.
Bioluminescent moss covered one wall like a mural depicting seasons that had never existed.
A row of squat, blue-leaved trees leaned together in conspiratorial angles, one of them blinking owlishly towards Splice.
The Assistant walked deeper into the green, letting the sun slide over his skin like a balm.
He made his way to a bench shaped from reclaimed wood and what appeared to be a retired council podium.
A cluster of star-shaped flowers bloomed beside it in shades of silver and blush, exhaling something faintly minty into the late afternoon air.
He sat and let the air fill him as the voices of the garden, the soft rustle of leaf and life, sang to him.
“Green be slow,” he whispered. “Green be deep. Green be still.”
He did not understand what had seized him below, the jagged rush in his heartwood, the too-quick breath. But here, among his siblings, among those who grew without question or shame, he felt it ease, unknotted, until only stillness remained.
The soft sound of footsteps drew his attention.
A neat figure in a dove-grey cardigan and sharply creased slacks stood at the end of the garden path, a clipboard tucked under one arm, glasses perched halfway down his nose. His shoes gleamed. His hair was combed. Every inch of him radiated mild-mannered bureaucratic competency.
Splice knew that cardigan. Knew the glasses. It was the outfit the being sometimes wore when he wanted to be perceived as “helpful” in a tenant-facing sort of way. But nothing could hide the way shadows bent subtly around his outline.
“Mr. Lyle,” Splice said in a low voice. “You’re looking… human.”
The apartment manager inclined his head in a mild, almost courtly gesture. “Greetings, Assistant. Yes, this form was necessary. A viewing was scheduled for Mr. Samora’s old apartment on Floor 14.”
He moved to sit beside Splice, placing the clipboard neatly between them on the bench. “The building still has not decided. There is a discomfort in the foundation. This is highly irregular.”
“The building does not often take this long to find a new tenant,” Splice said, watching the light shift across the garden path.
“No,” Mr. Lyle agreed. “It has been unusually long.”
He turned to look at Splice, and just for a moment, Splice saw through the mildness to the eldritch entity below.
“As long as our newest resident has resided in our building,” the apartment manager said, glasses glinting. “And as long as your god has been awake, coincidentally.”
The building shifted, and a subtle creak ran through the bench beneath them, echoed by a faint shiver in the bricks.
The sensation bloomed in Splice’s chest again, hot and wild. “I…” The word caught, sharp and unfinished, in his throat.
“Some things are best spoken aloud,” Mr. Lyle observed calmly. “It gives them weight.”
Splice swallowed, closing his eyes and exhaling through his nose. The growing sensation whined in complaint and curled up, receding to the deep soil of his mind.
“I do not know what to do,” he finally said.
Mr. Lyle’s hum was low and metallic, a sound like wind through hollow pipes. The bricks at their feet hissed faintly in response.
“Beltane approaches,” the apartment manager said.
“Things always shift as the threshold draws near. But this time… it feels different. The roots themselves quiver, as though something is rotting beneath the soil. Orell has been weaving in circles. Thess reported a swarm of keys outside their door, none of which fit any lock. And your god does not slumber.”
He looked at Splice, and his eyes flashed silver. As Splice watched, the pupils spread across the sclera until the apartment manager’s gaze was black as obsidian.
“The building has begun to whisper of our newest resident,” he added, voice mild. “It murmurs she may reach where others cannot. She can step into stacks even your god’s roots cannot touch.”
Splice’s mouth tightened. He looked away, toward the wall of glowing moss and humming vines. “Yes. I have… noticed her.”
“It may be worthwhile to speak with her,” Mr. Lyle said softly. He rose, brushing imaginary dust from the sleeves of his cardigan and cocked his head slightly.
“I do not know why Greymarket watches Marigold Flynn so closely. But I do know this: the building chose her. It could have filled 4C with any tenant, but it waited. Watched. Until she pressed her palm to the wall and whispered that she wished to be truly seen. Greymarket heard that wish, Assistant. And it answered.”
He turned to go, his footsteps soft against the mossy stone. At the threshold of the courtyard, he added, “Perhaps the answer you seek lies there.”
Splice said nothing as Mr. Lyle disappeared into the green-shadowed corridor.
He remained on the bench as the garden settled back into its rhythm, but his mind was anything but still.
She can step into stacks even your god's roots cannot touch.
What did that mean? What secrets was Goldie Flynn meant to unearth? And why did the building watch her so closely, rearranging itself around her presence like a flower turning toward the sun?
Splice stood, decision crystallizing like frost on leaves. He would swallow his discomfort of her glittering chaos. He would ask her for help. Not yet. But soon.
The thought of relying on her still twisted something uncomfortable in his chest, but beneath it, something else stirred. Something that felt dangerously close to anticipation.
A faint breeze stirred the leaves around him, and for just a moment, he could have sworn he heard laughter on the wind. Bright and reckless and utterly unrepentant.