Chapter Text
Martin didn’t really want to be a god’s soulmate.
Oh, he supposed it wouldn’t be so bad if he was the soulmate of a New God, a god of innovation or art or parties. He still wasn’t much suited to a life of being pampered and spoiled by an immortal, a life of strangers stealing worshipful glances at his soulmark, but he would have made do. He would have fallen in love with whoever he was promised to, and found the patience to cope with all that came with the life of an Amatus.
But no. Martin didn’t get a normal soulmate, or, better yet, get to be one of the billions of people who don’t have a soulmark at all. Instead, in addition to all the undue attention and reverence that he received once people realized he was an Amatus, Martin also had to worry about his soulmate accidentally shattering his mind. Because of course, of course, his soulmate was a Dread Power.
The difference between the New Gods and the Dread Powers was staggering. New Gods were a lot like people. Very rich people who had soulmates and couldn’t die, but still, people. They had sex, they held conversations, they could pretend to be human if it suited them. They were powerful, but their power was confined to a very narrow domain. They were old, but only as old as civilization.
The Dread Powers, on the other hand, were unknowable. Their minds were so extremely different from those of mortals that they were near impossible to understand. They were older than civilization, older than life, and their abilities were as vast and all-encompassing as their domains. They were the sentient manifestations of broad concepts: war, sickness, death. And one of them was Martin’s soulmate.
There were only fifteen Dread Powers. Of that number, eight had found soulmates. The Amati of the Dread Powers all had one of two fates: vanished (Gerard Keay, Jane Prentiss, Jared Hopworth, Oliver Banks), or subsumed into a cult (Annabelle Cane, Simon Fairchild, Peter Lukas, Agnes Montague). Neither option sounded good to Martin.
The fact was, Martin didn’t want to meet his soulmate. He didn’t want to be an Amatus. It was a secret he’d only ever told his mother, because to not want to be an Amatus was unthinkable. Amati were universally regarded as lucky; if people found out that Martin hated being one, he would be deemed ungrateful. Even his Mum had snubbed him when he told her that he didn’t want the life set out for him.
Martin understood why people might think he was ungrateful. To most, the life of an Amati was one of endless love and luxury. Nobody thought about the undue attention, the thinly-veiled jealousy, the way one’s choice of who to love was ripped away from them. And, of course, no one spared a thought for those fifteen souls that were bound to the Dread Powers. So, yes. Martin understood why people might think he was ungrateful. But that wouldn’t stop him from hiding and running and clawing his way out of his destiny.
—
Martin stared at his soulmark. His soulmark stared back. Literally.
The cluster of ink-drawn eyes spanning up his left forearm marked him as belonging to the Dread Power of knowledge: the Ceaseless Watcher, the Eye, Beholding, the Living Archive, It Knows You, et cetera. Which was why, if Martin didn’t want to alert his soulmate to his existence (and he very much didn’t), it would be a decidedly stupid idea to accept a job at the Eye’s cult.
Martin turned to his computer and stared at the Magnus Institute’s email. The email stared back. Figuratively.
Here’s the thing, though. Martin really, really needed a job. As things were right now, he didn’t have enough money to pay for rent and groceries and his mother’s care home. And the Magnus Institute payed their Archival Assistants insanely well. And he hadn’t gotten a response from anywhere else, not with his fudged CV. And it wasn’t like he had to tell them he was an Amatus; he could just…keep that information to himself. And he didn’t even need to do an interview, which was good, because Martin was a good liar but not good enough to bald-facedly lie about his CV in front of an acolyte of the Eye.
In his heart of hearts, Martin knew it was a bad idea. While there were research institutions pledged to the Eye all over the world, the Magnus Institute was oldest, the most powerful, home to Jonah Magnus himself. It was the site of the original Watcher’s Crown, for gods’ sakes! If the Eye payed attention to any of Its temples, it would be that one. And Martin knew that his usual strategy of blending in with the crowd wouldn’t be enough to hide from the Ceaseless Watcher.
Martin’s acceptance email with all relevant information attached sat in front of him. His finger wavered over the Send button. It was a bad idea. He would be fine. He’d get caught. He wouldn’t get caught. Martin hemmed and hawed, teetered and tottered, but in the end, his decision was made by the same force that has driven humans for millennia: desperation.
He sent the email.
—
The Archives weren’t the most welcoming place in the world. They were grey from floor to ceiling, lit only by buzzing fluorescents. There was a bullpen, which had three desks. There was a winding maze of rooms and shelves called Document Storage. And, most interestingly, there was a door with the words HEAD ARCHIVIST embossed into the wood.
Martin tried the door. It was locked.
“Nothing in there, mate.”
Martin yelped at the sudden voice, twisting around frantically.
“Woah! Easy there.”
Leaning against the entrance to the Archives was a rather handsome man sporting mismatched socks, bubblegum-pink hair, and a Hawaiian shirt. Martin was fairly impressed with how many dress code violations the man had fit into one outfit.
The stranger held out his hand with an easy grin. “Tim Stoker. You must be Archival Assistant number three. Sasha and I have been dying to meet you.”
“Um, Martin Blackwood. Is the- is the Head Archivist in yet?”
Tim tipped his head back and laughed. “Oh, you’re new, aren’t you? To the Institute, I mean.”
Martin felt somewhat frazzled at being singled out so quickly. “And what makes you say that?”
“Everyone who works at the Institute knows that there hasn’t been an Archivist for over fifty years.”
What? The position Martin had been hired for was Archival Assistant, which he had taken to mean “assistant to the Head Archivist”. If there wasn’t an Archivist, then what was Martin here for?
“Why not?”
Tim shrugged. “The last one, Gertrude Robinson, was batshit insane. She messed up the filing system big time. It’s impossible to find anything now. So Magnus stopped hiring Archivists, statements stopped being processed, and that was that.”
“Okay…so what do we actually do, without an Archivist to take statements?”
“We,” said a new voice, “have the dubious honor of organizing the Archives. Everything Gertrude did to this place, we have to undo it.”
A tall woman emerged from the depths of Document Storage with a box in her arms and round spectacles perched on her nose.
As the new arrival placed the box on her desk, Martin extended a hand in greeting. “You must be Sasha.”
“That I am. You’re the new hire, right? Martin?”
Martin nodded.
“Lovely. Now…,” Sasha turned to the gaping maw of Document Storage. “Let’s get started.”
—
For six glorious months, nothing went wrong. Nobody found out about Martin’s CV, no one found out about his soulmark. He was miserable at his job, owing to the fact that he had none of the formal training listed on his CV, but Sasha was a good teacher. He got drinks with his coworkers every Friday, visited his mum every Sunday, and had worked out a good routine for himself overall.
Then Jonathan Sims showed up.
One cool day in October, a man with long, greying hair and a deceptively young face stumbled into the Archives, acting very much as though he wasn’t fully in tune with his legs. The man was small on every axis, and he dressed like a librarian. The thing that really caught Martin’s attention, though, was his eyes. They were a bright, luminous green, standing out against his dark skin.
Martin glanced at the others, unsure of what to do. People didn’t just wander into the Archives; people didn’t go into the Archives at all. 99% of the time, the Assistants were left to their own devices, and every once in a blue moon Sam from Research popped down to retrieve a statement. (Sam was the only Researcher that visited them, mainly on account of the fact that he was the only one not convinced that the Archives were either haunted or cursed.) They had never had a stranger in the Archives before, and Martin wasn’t quite sure how to proceed.
One look at Tim and Sasha revealed that they weren’t quite sure either.
Tim stared at Martin and not-so-subtly jerked his head towards the stranger. Martin cringed. Looks like the others were expecting him to deal with the newcomer.
“Um…hello? Are you lost?” That was the best explanation he could come up with. A new employee, or maybe just a random person, lost on the way to the Library.
The man’s head swiveled in an almost inhuman fashion, eyes locking onto Martin’s. In that moment, Martin felt Seen. Most people completely overlooked him, and the few that actually bothered to look at him couldn’t see past his veneer of awkward friendliness. But now, Martin felt like this strange man saw down to his core. It was weirdly comforting. Not being seen gets lonely after a while, and this man was inadvertently soothing the ache.
Martin shook himself. What the hell? Who has those kinds of thoughts about a stranger?
The man blinked, once, and the spell was broken. “Is this…the Archives?”
“Um, yes. But, uh, we don’t take statements anymore, so-”
“I’m not here to make a statement,” the man interrupted. “I’m the new Head Archivist.”
Martin balked. “I beg your pardon? We haven’t had a Head Archivist in years.”
“Yes, well, Jonah decided it was time for the Institute to start taking statements again, so he hired me. I hope that’s not a problem. I assure you I’m quite qualified.”
There were several things wrong with this. Firstly, no one called Jonah Magnus by his first name. It would be disrespectful. Yet this man spoke of Magnus with a bizarre degree of familiarity. Secondly, there was no reason for Magnus to suddenly require an Archivist after going so many years without. Thirdly, being Head Archivist wasn’t just a job, but a position of high religious importance. If this man was as qualified as he claimed, he would have had to be part of the Institute for years, yet somehow Martin had never met or heard of him, and from the looks on their faces, neither had Tim or Sasha.
But, despite all of this, Martin didn’t think the stranger was lying. He emitted sincerity, seeming genuinely confused at Martin’s confusion. If this man said he was Martin’s new boss, who was Martin to argue?
He extended a hand. “Martin Blackwood. Pleasure to meet you.”
“Likewise. My name is…” and here the man paused for a long moment, “Jon. Jon…Sims.”
Tim piped up. “Nice to meet you, boss! I’m Tim, that’s Sasha. Welcome to the Archives.”