At about seven o’clock in the morning two tall, quiet-voiced men arrived, disturbingly-similar in appearance with their dark, neat hair and brown robes. They’d come from the Ministry of Mortiforn to arrange the details. Xantaire must’ve set it up, I realised. She’d been out doing the real work of dealing with the realities of the situation, like she always did, while I’d gone off on some stupid misadventure.
I paid the two gold it cost to obtain a plot of land at the shrine of Yune – anything to shut them up. The way they were going on about it, it sounded very much as if they suspected we were about to donate the body to necromantic research. Were so many people swayed by the dividends of selling the corpses of their loved ones? So many that even the priests of Mortiforn were terrified we were about to do it? It was easier to just cut them off. Where else was I going to let him be buried, anyway? I hushed Orstrum when he threatened my tranquillity by trying to thank me for my ‘generosity’.
I felt better when I was blaming myself for Morsus’s death and his grandfather’s gratitude undercut that, as if I didn’t already have enough to repay. If I wasn’t blaming myself I would be blaming this Orven, whoever he was, and that would lead back to furious Feychilde. I didn’t want to have to go there again.
The undertakers cast their plain black shroud over Morsus’s body and carried him together from the apartment.
Orstrum went to Xantaire’s room, dragging his feet, shoulders slumped. He was going to sleep in a real bed, at least, assuming he managed to win the battle with his troubled thoughts and actually get some rest.
I just sat there in the main room, going over it all in my head.
It had happened the same way as at my parents’ graves. The sensation, of cool flesh animated, obeying an unspoken command, an unformed thought. And I’d run away for fear of making it worse, when I should’ve stayed, should’ve faced my failure there and then. Now I had to wait, and the waiting was the worst part. If she were here now, I could just spill it all – but I had to keep thinking, churning the details over and over in my head. For all I knew I could’ve misremembered everything, maybe it was worse than I remembered it, maybe she was even more offended than I could imagine –
Then, not ten minutes after Orstrum had retired, she appeared in the doorway.
Upon looking at her, the tension melted out of me. There was no offence in her eyes, no scorn on her face.
The moment she’d seen me she stopped, one hand on either side of the door-frame, and stared back at me.
“Kas. You’re back.”
“Xan.”
I held out my arms and walked towards her – within a second we were bear-hugging, her fierce grip tight around my chest.
I returned the grip, returned the emotion.
We didn’t part, but we relaxed the embrace, until our heads were lolling upon one another’s shoulder. I felt her tears running down into the neckline of my tunic.
“They – took – him,” she murmured.
“He’ll be at the Shrine of Yune later. We’ll see him again tomorrow.”
She nodded into my shoulder, still clasping me.
“And did you… Did you find out?”
“Xan –“
“It’s okay, you don’t have to – to say. It was the last thing you said before you left. I just thought –“
“I found out who killed him.”
I loosed a long breath, and released her. We went to the benches, and sat down.
I explained the story as I’d patched it together from Telrose and the other sources – my part in her brother’s death, and the parts of the criminals he gambled against – the part Orven played in delivering the killing-stroke.
I gave her no names.
She’d taken my hand in both of hers before I was half-done, and her eyes gave me the forgiveness I needed so badly before she ever opened her mouth to reply.
“You didn’t kill him,” she said at last. “Don’t think it for a second, Kas – how could you? After everything you’ve done for him, for us, you go and blame yourself? It’s unhealthy, Kas, really it is. You’ve got to realise… how much he owed you. How much we all owe you. You don’t owe us anything, yet you go around giving us platinum, and I only take it because I know I’ll hurt you worse by refusing. Honestly, young man –“
“I do owe you,” I interrupted her quietly, staring off into space.
She didn’t see it the way I did – how could she? She’d never really noticed the ways in which the four of them were integral to my life.
“For what?” she asked, her tone overly-gentle, completely uncharacteristic of her.
“For being my family,” I replied, returning my eyes to hers. “You’re… my, like, big sister, right, Xan?”
Her eyes welled up with tears again. “Of course I am, you daft sod,” she blurted, flinging her arms around me again.
Holding onto her, I whispered. “You have no idea how much I needed you guys. I could never have done it on my own. The last three years…”
“I understand.”
A little time passed.
“I’m thinking of moving out.”
She stiffened, then drew her arms away from me quickly, moving so she could look me in the face again.
“What, Kas?”
“Not now – not soon, maybe. But sometime. I need more money, to do it properly, but I –“
“What are you even talking about?”
There was panic in her voice, a real anxiety.
This was the wrong time, I chided myself, you drop-brained fool.
Her voice was raised, strangled with what sounded like disgust. “So now you’re a champion, you’re just up and leaving us? With my brother dead, you’re what – just going to take the twins and -”
“No, Xan! Stop,” I pleaded, my hands raised palms outward; “please listen to me, Xan. I mean to stop anything like this happening again. It’s being close to me that gets people in trouble.”
“It wasn’t being ‘close’ to you that got my brother ki-”
“There was an arch-diviner in my bedroom two nights ago, a darkmage right there with a knife, threatening to kill the twins.” This I said in a sharp whisper, hoping she’d match my volume if she replied. “I need a… a base. Somewhere I can go that I’m not putting anyone in danger.”
Her gaze was blank; she was still a bit behind. “A darkmage – was – here?” She waved a hand in the direction of my room, from which faint snoring still emanated.
I nodded. “And I didn’t fight. I couldn’t. He had me, if he wanted me. No, I got lucky. It was one of the less-bad ones.”
Her brow furrowed. “Which?”
I hesitated on the word, but I couldn’t lie, and I knew I’d sacrifice what goodwill I’d earned if I started trying to put her off.
“Duskdown.”
“One of the… less-bad…?”
Xantaire’s stare was no less blank, her confusion only slowly giving way to the inevitable debilitating terror.
Then she whip-snapped up to her feet, making her way to the door to apply the various locks, as if driven to do so by pure impulse.
“Someone had left the window open,” I offered to the back of her head, by way of explanation. “I think…”
“Someone…” She let go of the chain she’d been lifting into place, and it swung loosely back across, like a pendulum – then, the moment over, she caught it again and continued working on the locks.
She thinks it was Morsus.
“It doesn’t matter who did it, he would’ve found a way anyhow. Nothing any of us could’ve done. I’m pretty sure guys like him can just jump through glass and land perfectly on their feet, all that stuff. So don’t sweat a window being left unlocked. Just saying.”
She resumed her seat opposite me.
“So you’d be leaving the twins with me,” she said.
“If – if that’s okay?” I ventured. “It’s not like I’d be staying out every night, I’d be able to come back whenever I wanted, whenever you or the twins needed – it’s just, if I think I’m being followed, or if I need to meet other champions – this place can’t do that, you know?”
“Of course it’s okay!” she said, suddenly bunching up a fist and staring down at it. “I’d die if you just took them away now, it’s – you, and Jaid and Jar, you’re my family too.” She looked up at me, seeing me through a sheen of tears. “But why – why did Mor- Mor have to go and –“
The dam in her broke, then, and she wept – really wept, like I’d wept on Tanra’s shoulder.
I put my arms around her, and held her tight. After a while the kids came out and joined in, and it quickly became a group-hug, a great mingling of grief that, despite everything, let me find the joy in the sharing – the melancholy happiness which came of knowing that, although we lived in a world filled with death and darkness and misery, there would always be people there who loved me, who would support me, and whom I could help in kind.
They would always be there for me, and I for them, and together we could conquer anything life threw at us.
* * *
“Are you certain zat you’re up to zis?” Em asked, stopping me and holding both my hands, looking up into my face. “Ve can call it off – I can come viz you, vherever you vont to go. Zey vill understand –“
“Em, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be. Trust me.”
If there was one thing I knew right now, it was the value of family.
I’d told Em that what Zel had almost foreseen was Morsus’s death, when the fairy interrupted our date last night with her funny-tasting-future story. I even explained my overreaction, my near-miss with Telrose, and about the strange new champion that was Killstop. I held off giving Tanra’s real name, just because that would feel wrong, breaking her confidence like that – but Em understood, and seemed fine with it.
She smiled, and I kissed her. It felt good, abnormal, to be here without my mask and robe – just plain old Kas out kissing my girlfriend. I could almost forget the undigested weight of guilt and sorrow sitting like a lump in my stomach. I could almost be someone else, someone far from the misery and the darkness.
Though if I were to say I wasn’t feeling nervous on top of everything else, I’d have been lying – I’d never gotten to the meeting-the-parents stage with any of my previous forays into courting someone, never mind after just a few days… These had been some intense days, though.
I didn’t think that the reason it was different this time was just that Em was a beautiful arch-wizard with an exotic accent – it was because she was her. She had a bit of a twisted sense of humour, and she was clever and curious, intensely loyal… and powerful. Her power almost scared me and I liked that; it made me less afraid of my own power, somehow. And I liked being part of her world and her being part of mine, as we strode into our futures, archmages side-by-side.
So yes, I was nervous. I really wanted to make a good impression – I’d been out shopping with the family (except Orstrum, whom we’d let sleep through the afternoon), venturing into Oldtown where I picked up, amongst other things, some new clothes. They were terrible to look at, as far as I was concerned, but the assistant had assured me I looked “simply divine”. I was wearing a crimson-and-gold doublet and a (height-of-fashion) black leather kilt with matching boots. The trip was a good distraction for the kids – for all of us, probably. I hadn’t slept since pretty early on Twoday morning, but I’d kept myself going all Waneday, and now I half-suspected I wouldn’t even sleep tonight, the way I was feeling.
Perhaps the extreme neatness of the clothes I was wearing would distract them from what must’ve been my haggard face, bleary eyes. Em was decidedly dressed-down when compared with her usual choice of garment, with a simple shawl over a long-sleeved blue top, loose black trousers covering her legs. There was a distinct chance I’d gone a little overboard, but oh well.
Em had stopped me as we’d arrived outside their house, the house she’d managed to secure using her magister’s income. It was, remarkably, a single dwelling-place – sure, it was a terrace with other houses on either side, but the whole internal property belonged to her. For so long as she kept making the rent, of course. This area was far from the Greywater, and was instead near to the very westernmost part of Mund, where Rivertown Gate was situated. The streets around here were huddled almost directly underneath the great white wall itself; if I cast my gaze upwards I could see the white battlements rearing up above the buildings, atop an impenetrable, seamless fortification that occluded a good chunk of the dusk-dim sky.
That said, it was quite picturesque. There were even trees lining the street.
“Breathe, Kas,” she said in a serious tone, lying her hand against my chest. “I trust you, but –“
“Then let’s go in,” I said. “Come on, you’re not getting cold feet about me are you?”
I gave her my cheekiest eyebrow-raise, which at least elicited another tight-looking smile from her.
“My feet don’t get cold,” she relented, and led me to the door.
She probably had a key for the lock, but just as at mine there were likely chains or bars to deal with too, so she knocked. It would be better for me to be introduced on the threshold as well, I guessed.
Or maybe it was just that she’d been right about the low crime rate around here. Was it being so far from everything else, stuck out on the very edge of the city? There were none of the chain-rattlings or bolt-slammings I’d expected to hear, as the handle turned and the door creaked open.
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Em’s mother, ‘Atarvet’, was standing there beaming at me. She wore a stained apron over her grey woollen dress. Atarvet was shorter than her daughter, but despite the wrinkles afforded her by age she had the same dimpled cheeks, same almost cleft-chin, same platinum waterfall of hair as her daughter.
After a momentary glance at me, her eyes went to Em’s face expectantly.
“Mazan, zis is Kas Mortenn,” she said straightforwardly, seizing my arm suddenly with both her hands, moving herself close to me.
“Mrs. Reyd, it’s lovely to meet you,” I managed.
She was still just smiling at me.
In a single flash I sorted through the options to fill the awkward silence.
The weather? Don’t be an idiot.
Compliments? Yes!
‘I love your dress, did you make it yourself?’
What, am I doing my best to imply they’re poor? Besides, have you seen that dress? It’d sound like a backhanded compliment at best.
‘Your home is lovely.’
They didn’t buy it themselves, you clod. Do you want to rub her face in the fact she relies on her daughter’s income?
‘I see where your daughter gets her looks.’
Rein it in, this is the first time you’re meeting her! Twelve Hells!
‘The food sm-’
“Is that our dinner I can smell already cooking?” I murmured, doing my best to sound awe-struck. “It smells lovely – I don’t know much about Onsolorian cuisine, but your daughter’s taken me to one restaurant, and it didn’t smell half as good.”
I’d said too much, wittered on for too long –
No, she was still smiling, greenish eyes sparkling, studying me.
Then she spoke.
“Lovely to meet you too, Kas.” Her accent was thicker than Em’s, but she still spoke in a quick, easy manner – she might’ve been foreign, but Mundic was Mundic and she’d probably been speaking it for most of her life. “Von’t you call me Atar? And please, come in, both of you.”
She stepped inside and we followed; she locked the door, a single, basic lock any number of people in Sticktown would pick open for a cut of the profits.
Crossing the bare-wood interior hallway, she led us through another doorway into a back-room, talking over her shoulder as she went. “You’re quite right, young man, I am preparing one of my great-grammazan’s recipes. You are in for quite ze treat tonight!”
I surreptitiously dropped my satchel in a corner of the hall near some cases with papers inside; hopefully no one would go poking around in my things.
Within moments we were in the kitchen, implements and utensils all over the walls and cluttered sideboards. A cloud of steam and smoke was streaming out through the open window; there was a huge black pot over the stove, simmering with what looked like dozens of different vegetables.
A barrage of extremely-sweet scents assaulted my nostrils, but it was the novel way in which the smells assaulted my eyes that really got me.
Blinking back near-instantaneous tears, I gave an enthusiastic ‘woah!’ and dashed my hand across my face to wipe them away.
“Ha-ha, you’re going to enjoy zis I see,” Atar commented with something of a grin, then she turned to her daughter. “Em, ve vill prepare some of ze saltdough for him; it might help to take ze edge off.”
Em had already been washing her hands; she turned to one of the work-surfaces and opened a small bin of flour, then fetched a bowl.
Atar took me by the elbow gently. “Come, I vill take you to Linn. Von’t you have some beer? Ve have a cellar, you know zis?”
She was already gently but insistently leading me out of the kitchen.
“I’m more than prepared to help…”
“Don’t be silly!”
Her ruthless smile never faded one bit, and I found, looking over my shoulder, that Em wasn’t even facing my direction – I wasn’t going to get any help from her.
Linn would be Linnard Reyd, Em’s father.
Within seconds I’d been whisked into what I’d have to call a sun-room – over half of one wall was comprised of windows, and a big section of the ceiling too.
They have houses like this in Rivertown? I thought with something of an inward gasp.
Sitting in a cushioned chair before the open glass door leading onto a garden – a garden! – was Em’s dad. I’d have recognised him anywhere – he had the same steely stare, the same hawkish nose and the same, well, bearing as his daughter. Close-cropped black-grey hair and a day’s growth of beard framed his slightly-sunken cheeks, slightly-lined brow. He wore a faded green short-sleeved vest, leaving his knotted arms exposed and barely covering his muscled chest.
In his hands, he held a short-bladed carving knife and a small block of wood – he was shifting the wood over and over, expertly strimming lengths away with the blade and letting them fall into a pile gathering in a box between his feet.
“Linn, this is Kas, Em’s friend.” Atar gave me a small but firm push between the shoulder-blades.
“I, erm – I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Reyd.” I held out my hand, then half-dropped it again, realising he was busy with his own hands.
A whisper of sound, and then a click, told me that Atar had just exited the room behind me.
He gave me a look that said ‘I hope this is worth the interruption’ as he very deliberately, slowly laid aside his knife, wiped his palm on his trousers, then reached out to shake my hand.
It was a grip like a tightly-wound iron vice, crunching slightly into the wood – except the vice was just his human hand, and the wood was my bones.
I tried not to let it show on my face but I must’ve started gritting my teeth as I did my best to smile.
“Kas,” he said, his voice surprisingly soft. “Pleased to meet you.”
He went back to his carving almost immediately, leaving me adrift.
I wasn’t really one for social pressures. I tended to retreat from situations like this. I found it hard to make small-talk when I had no in, no insight into a person. I didn’t want to talk about wood-carving. Why didn’t I ask Em for more information? I shrilled at myself, but it was futile now. An enchanter could do their stuff and have everything go exactly as they wished, I was sure… a diviner could plot the futures that would lead to a successful interaction and follow the path without a hitch, couldn’t they? It wasn’t fair…
I was used to being the one preparing dinner. In countries like Onsolor, things were still so primitive. Men toiled in the fields and hunted in the woods and journeyed to the marketplaces; women were kept protected in the home, raising children, performing tasks deemed less perilous. Access to magery was restricted by wealth, so that there were but a handful of mages in each city. Archmages would be almost unheard-of outside dangerous darkmages and the odd itinerant hero-mage. The existence of magic hadn’t much changed the affairs of state and the military-styled feudal systems present in most countries, and the farther from Mund, the less the change.
So it was that Linn, the man of the household, was left to his own devices while Atar and Em went around busying themselves with the meal.
So it was that I, the newcomer to the household, was left to stand there mute like a gormless fool in front of the man of the household.
“I – what are you carving?” I asked, after what must’ve been at least ten seconds of awful silence.
Steely eyes flashed up at me. “You carve?”
The eyes didn’t stay on me longer than a moment, returning at once to the block of wood, the knife’s edge. More and more strips joined the pile in the box on the floor.
I was tempted to lie, but I knew even exaggeration could get me into an embarrassing situation. Better to err on the side of self-deprecation, right?
“Truthfully, I haven’t done it in years.” Not since Dad died. “I miss it, though, sometimes.”
That bit wasn’t exactly true. In all honesty the memories themselves were painful, and I had exactly zero desire to revisit my wood-carving hobbies of the ancient past with Linn Reyd.
Linn grunted, still looking down at his work. “I voz surprised, vhen ve arrived in Mund, to find zere vere ozzers viz my passion. I had thought it an Onsolorian… how do you say… a custom, yes?”
I took that as rhetorical, and walked to the nearest chair, leaning gently on its back so that I could get a closer look at what he was carving.
“You’re using a walnut?” I asked, injecting a soft note of incredulity into my voice. It was one of the hardest woods, and it wasn’t cheap either. I’d never gotten past butternut, as far as I could remember.
He glanced up at me, and met my eyes for a little longer this time before going back to his hands, the ghost of a smile crossing his lips.
“Black walnut. Tougher zan terreline, keeps its shape longer.” Linn named a wood I’d never heard of, I was pretty sure. “Viz a sharp-enough edge, it is no harder.”
He took a deep breath, then fixed his eyes on me, halting his knife-hand. “Sit. Take some vood. You vill show me vot you can do.”
Great.
This wasn’t an invitation; it was a command.
I crossed to the front of the chair, sitting down near him. A minute later I had one of his spare knives, a little block of lumber of a pale hue, and a wooden box between my feet that matched his – probably home-made, I now realised.
The knife was as sharp as I’d ever seen, and the pale wood was soft – he was going easy on me. A part of me might’ve felt insulted, but quite honestly I was just glad he hadn’t given me some of the black walnut as a ‘test’.
I spent at least half my focus on not cutting myself; while Zel’s regeneration would probably stem the flow in short order, I’d seen even the smallest cuts with blades as honed as this one squirt an embarrassing amount of blood.
We went about three more minutes in silence, with me desperately clutching for the answers to my two burning questions: firstly, something to say that wouldn’t distract me, and secondly – quite possibly of damning importance – something to actually carve. I was just building up a pretty pile of shavings at this point.
But then he broke the silence, only to say: “I respect a man who respects quiet.”
I flicked my eyes to him, but he hadn’t even looked at me.
Would it be seem sarcastic to him if I didn’t reply?
Stop overthinking things, I thought.
No. I would focus.
What do I carve?
I looked at his carving, but all I could make out was a vague humanoid shape, slowly taking form under his careful ministrations.
No – I couldn’t take a cue from him. Stealing his ideas would probably get us off on the wrong foot entirely.
They came from the woodlands, Em had said; Linn was a woodsman at heart. A hunter? No, what had she said?
When it came back to me, I cursed my foolishness.
Of course he would have an affinity for carving wood – he was a woodcutter back home – a lumberjack.
How had I not seen all this coming? I could’ve, well, practised at home, or something… I hadn’t carved a thing since I’d made my fortify set, and the game-pieces I’d done with as little attention-to-detail as I could manage whilst still making them distinct.
I didn’t want to carve.
I set upon a few ideas, then went for the simple-seeming option, the one which would look the best even if I didn’t get to finish it, add in all the little refinements.
What seemed a few minutes later, Atar came in with beer. A little after that she came in refilling the mugs and lighting more lanterns and candles. She reminded us that food would be ready in half an hour.
How long had it been since I’d seen Em? Since I’d last looked up for something more than my beer? More time had passed while we carved together in silence than I could’ve imagined, and I now held a somewhat chunky-looking miniature tree in my left hand, my right working almost unconsciously, shaping leaves into the canopy, tracing cracks in the bark down the trunk, fashioning little trails at the base to give the suggestion of roots.
“Vell,” Linn said at last, loosing a pent-up sigh of fatigue and setting down his knife, “you aren’t completely vizzout skill, friend of my daughter.”
There was the ghost of a smile again on his lips.
I looked down at his hands, and gasped.
There, in a smooth texture of grainless black, was a figurine of his wife, upper body already rendered in near-perfect detail. She was holding something between her hands that was as yet unfinished but, still, it was going to be beautiful.
“That…” I swallowed. “Mr. Reyd – that’s…”
“Vhat?”
I struggled; I couldn’t actually say ‘beautiful’ out loud. “Erm, it’s awesome?”
He shrugged. “It is ze fifth one I have made her since ve arrived in Mund. Come, shall ve show ze ladies vhat ve have accomplished?”
I caught Em’s little sigh of relief when she saw that me and her father had clearly been getting along okay.
“It’s very nice,” she said in an overly-fascinated voice as she turned my tree over in her hand, eyeing and stroking its contours.
I could hardly give voice to it but in my defence, I’d been trying to carve something to impress her dad, not her… which in retrospect might’ve been a bit daft of me, but I was willing to give myself a pass on this one. At least I’d avoided nicking an artery and bleeding all over the sun-room floors.
Atar gave Linn a kiss on the cheek as she accepted her husband’s gift; seemingly-emboldened, Em leaned towards me and (rather noisily) kissed me on the cheek – then just smiled winsomely at her parents as they turned to stare at her.
Possibly not doing me any favours, but I thought I understood it. She was making a gesture to clarify our relationship for them? I had no idea where to look, and hoped the smiles I thought I saw out of the corners of my eyes really were smiles, not grimaces.
Our miniature masterpieces went in the centre of the table as we dined. The sauces were indeed even more explosive than the restaurant’s, coming in what were described to me as pear and cherry flavours that at least managed to sound appetising – but the saltdough, a lump of soft, gooey warm bread, counteracted their heat in a way that ten jugs of ice-water never could. Within just a few seconds of popping a pinch of the dough in my mouth I was actually able to gasp out my gratitude. (Almost intelligibly, too, Em would later advise me.)
And it wasn’t all about sauces or even suspicious fish-finger-things – there was a tray of venison and nicely-burnt quartered potatoes. With two more mugs of beer, I was feeling fuller than I could remember… but I hadn’t accounted for a dessert of fruit-filled buns. When they arrived I promised Atar I’d only eat one no matter how many times she asked me if I wanted another, which had already become a thing due to my apparent addiction to her burnt potatoes.
Three and a half buns later, I waddled over to the cushioned benches in their main room, following them into the small and tidy space. The walls were painted a pale grey, and there were long red curtains drawn over the windows; the candles scattered around the room on shelves and stands reflected warmly from the scarlet drapes.
Atar was fixing together what looked like a wind instrument, some kind of flute that required a lot of assembly and looked to form a sort of ‘z’ shape… when Linn sat next to me.
As if the meal itself had all been part of some ruse to put me at my ease, he now interrogated me over my status, my potential. Was I highborn? Was I rich? Did I own property? By this point I was half-tipsy, sleep-deprived, emotionally-drained – and my belly was fit to burst. With a bunch of helpful interjections from Em I somehow clawed my way into a position where it was clear I worked with the Magisterium without giving away anything about my exact role; we strongly implied that I was still starting out, hence being able to afford finery but not a house – yet…
This seemed to be enough to mollify him, and when Atar began to play he moved to the other end of the bench – Em quickly settled between us, leaning against me.
I hesitantly put my arm around her shoulders, and listened to the music.
Atar was a gifted flautist, or whatever a player of this instrument would be called. She sat on a stool in the centre of the room, her hair swaying as she moved her hands across the various holes covering the flute’s surface. The sounds that oozed from that interaction of wood and breath and pressure coalesced into a lapping wave that pushed me away then pulled me back in deeper than before, breath after breath, pushing and pulling me deeper – a crooning, lost sound, something that keened for times and faces and people and places left behind.
Leaves fallen so far that they tumbled into the river and the water carried them away; all they had left was the memory of trees.
The memory of Morsus lying there dead – now he was gone, carried away beneath dark waters that flowed fast despite the stillness of the surface.
Tomorrow we would visit him at the shrine and that would be the last time we would look upon his face.
I cannot help but imagine it.
And I am there. I can see him standing at the end of the hallway. He wants to chase us but he doesn’t know how so I give him the knowledge and now Xantaire is screaming. We are through the door but he knows how to open it because I know, because I am him and he is me, we are dead, I am dead and that’s okay because it’s the living that’s painful, the death is just a stupid, horrible goodbye but once it’s over it’s over and you can rest, rest – until you’re plucked from the grave again, forced to dance like a puppet on a magician’s strings –
“Kas!”
Fingers poked in my ribs.
It was Em prodding me, shouting at me.
At the back of my mind I was hearing it already, but it was like an echo of Xantaire’s screaming in my nightmare, and I didn’t realise straight away.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered in a sleep-choked voice, looking up at Em through a fog that was for my half-asleep eyes only. I coughed, staring around. “Fell asleep. Long day.”
“Listen!”
I focussed, seeing Linn and Atar both standing near the door to the hallway, their faces drawn, their eyes on their daughter.
I focussed, and the moment I did I woke up for real.
One hundred percent awake, I reassured myself. I’m at the top of my game. I’m going to do this.
I could hear it now. I could hear the ringing, the magical pealing sounds that maintained their volume over the many miles between here and there. We were the farthest from Hightown we could get without being outside the walls of Mund, but it wasn’t quiet.
Gong! Gong! Gong!
The Mourning Bells.
And this time I wasn’t going to be one of the ones running for cover. This time, I was going to help bring the fight to them.
I looked up at Em and she looked back down at me.
“You saw the last Incursion? You know what to expect?” I asked.
She nodded. Her face was pale but her cobalt eyes were burning with anticipation.
“I helped,” she said.
That was good. She’d have some idea of what we had to actually do. I’d spent the last Incursion – all the previous Incursions – cowering with the twins and the others.
I wouldn’t be there for them tonight – tonight, of all nights. This was going to be bad for them.
I stood up, and Em’s parents moved their eyes to me. I could see the fear in the both of them, the near-paralysis to which the Bells alone had brought them.
I felt sorry for them in the moment; they’d come to Mund to escape their own horrors, perhaps even hoping that the stories about the demonic invasions were just tall tales. Had they seen something terrifying during the last one? Had they failed to heed the warnings, stayed out on the streets too late?
“Mr. and Mrs. Reyd – thank you for the wonderful evening, but I’m afraid I have to take my leave now.”
“You’re going out zere?” Atar asked in an almost-squeak.
“We both are, mazan,” Em said gently.
“So you are zis Feychilde.” Linn had a grim look on his face now, his hands on his hips.
I opened and closed my mouth, looked at Em and back to him –
“It didn’t take too much to put it togezzer,” he said, shrugging nonchalantly while wearing the ghost of a smile on his face again. “You – take care of her, friend of my daughter. You make sure she returns to us safe.”
“Paza!” Em chided him. “You can’t just put zat on –“
“It’s okay, Em,” I cut in. “I’ll make sure she’s safe, Mr. Reyd.” I turned back to the glowering arch-wizard. “Look, I’ll get my bag; get your robe on? We need to leave, now.”
A brief stop in the wash-room later, I was outside, waiting for Em while hovering above the house. My mask and robe in place, I sliced the air with my fey wings to stay afloat as a hot storm-wind rolled down from the north-east.
I could see flashes in the distance, hear detonations on the gusts of heated air – it was coming from across the Greywater. The far side of Rivertown, or perhaps into Oldtown.
Not far – not for us.
Moments later Em was with me, augmenting my flight with her own magic, and without a word we plunged through the sky, heading towards the heart of hell.
Gong! Gong! Gong!