Chapter 45 - Unbidden Gifts

The leaves were turning, the rain of crunching leaves leaving deep piles Gita enjoyed hiding underneath in an attempting to scare the other Keepers. A habit that made the otherwise boring task of sweeping them out of the courtyard every day a bit more entertaining. The day shift pushed the leaves out of the way of the carts and foot traffic and then at night Mareth enjoyed incinerating the piles first thing, sending spirals of dancing sparks into the purpling sky.

Gita stopped hiding in them after dusk in short order.

It was on one windless night as their shift started and they were all gathered to watch Mareth’s fire show that Cadryn noticed the first gift. Tucked into the edge of window’s sill, as if left behind by some minuscule watchman, was a tiny little helmet. At first he had mistaken it for some kind of insect shell, but upon examination the details became clear: three shells formed together to make the bowl of the helmet with a pair of beetle pincers for cheek guards. In the light of the burning leaves the shells shone with an iridescent glow. It was really a rather pretty little bit of work.

“You too, huh,” Felina said from where she was re-packing her bag with supplies at the dining table. “I’ve found a few strange things too: a tiny sock in my boot, a pillow at the edge of my alcove, and there was this one in my pack just now.” She held up a small charm made of fur and amber, added to a string with two others. Watching her Cadryn thought it suddenly odd to be packing a bag.

“You off somewhere?”

“I hate your not-girlfriend,” she said, shoving a large loaf of wheat bread into the pack. “She’s really worked up about that necromancer, wants me to spend a few days watching the cave entrance for activity.”

“Yes, perish the thought of you scouting,” Cadryn said, making an effort, and failing, to contain his sarcasm.

“I’m just bein’ a gripe,” Felina admitted, synching up her pack and slinging it over a shoulder. “She’s smart, an’ good at keeping everything in her head at once. A real leader.”

Cadryn watched for signs this was a trap, and finding none, clapped his hands together. “Felina Harlow, as I breathe, did you just compliment another human being?”

Pausing at the doorway, she turned back, just enough to show her teeth in a grimace, “No one will believe you, Bence.”

And with that she vanished into the courtyard, the crackling of burning leaves faded to a dull popping as the last pile went up, cinders curling skywards like tiny fireworks. Creaking on the stairs proceed Mareth’s arrival as the outside door swung open, the wind slamming it against the hinges.

“Opps,” she whispered, grabbing it, a wide smile on her ash-stained face.

“You got a little . . . everywhere,” Cadryn said, gesturing broadly.

Shaking out her sleeves, Mareth rubbed at her face vigorously, it did nothing but spread the ash around.

“Nevermind. So how might I serve the Empire tonight?”

Adjusting her robes, Mareth put on her serious face, and walked over to the table. Reaching into the wide leather satchel she carried everywhere now, she produced a number of reports and spread them out. “Notice anything about these?”

Cadryn took some time to look them over, they all seemed normal enough at first, but the longer he read the more bizarre the writing became. Almost fantastical in nature, definitely paranoid. When he checked the bottom he was surprised to see they were all signed: Encara Tos.

“That’s weird, she’s usually verbose in reports, but not . . .”

“Unhinged,” Mareth concluded, sliding the pages back together. “Something’s off with her, and I trust you. See what you can figure out.”

“As you command,” Cadryn said, the smile in the words not lost on Mareth.

Walking up to the Library of Oathkeeper Jalisco at night reminded Cadryn of the parkside salons in the upper districts of Throne-home. Passing through the rustling foliage of the Lower Gardens winding footpaths with the only sound the crunching of tiny leaves, slowed the heart rate and eased the mind. So when the building itself emerged, its windows alight with candles and lamps, the smell of Encara’s incense sharp in cold night. Cadryn was duly shocked at the sight of a room full of furniture piled outside the doorway, and a screaming Historian berating the objects as if they had deeply wrong her.

Walking around the edge of the Library slowly, Cadryn watched a small futon join the pile with a crashing tumble.

“And stay out!” Encara roared, slamming the door.

Picking his way past the pile of discarded furniture, Cadryn tried the door, found it locked. Bracing for the worst, he knocked twice.

“Oh, you think I’ll just forgive you your treachery? I think not, foul, odious, conniving wretches!”

“Encara, it’s me,” Cadryn said, trying to sound normal in spite of the nervous laughter building in his gut. “Could you open the door, please?”

There was almost a minute of silence before he heard the lock scrape open, then the door cracked enough for only a line of light to escape. Encara’s eye appeared, and in the moon light the pupil was a yawning void, unnaturally wide. Her voice came out a strangled whisper, “Are you, with them?”

Leaning close to the door, Cadryn moved his body to block her line of sight to the furniture. “No, I’m with you . . . we’re both Keepers, right?”

Encara’s face retreated, and then after a few moments, the door swung inward. Before he could duck inside, her hand shot out, seizing his tunic and yanked Cadryn within, cracking his forehead on the low door jam. She slammed and barred the passage as he went sprawling to the carpeted floor.

“Shit,” Cadryn said, grabbing his head, his hand came back slick with blood. “Was that even necessary.”

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Encara did not respond, merely walking past him into the center of the large room. Gone were the tables and chairs that previously occupied the first floor, all of them were now piled into on corner in a haphazard stack that reached all the way to the roof. Looking at it, Cadryn was amazed someone of Encara’s delicate constitution could even manage that. As she paced around the cleared space, the fire at her back blazed high on a diet of chairs and books.

“You’re burning the Library!” Cadryn yelled, no longer able to maintain a facade of calm.

“Still your fat Provalian tongue,” she hissed, stopping in place. “It all comes back, always back, always back. Why? It’s a trap, a trap, this place . . . it wants me to stay, never leaving, never changing, and just like the books, and the tables, and the chairs, it is madness. So what If I burn it? It all comes back.” As Encara spoke, her body shook with tremors of agitation and rage.

Cadryn watched her closely, now fully before him in a well-lit space it was obvious: the woman was under the influence of something powerful, a drug or spell, he did not know. She was unkempt, rambling, and possibly dangerous. He needed to find out how she got this way, and soon.

“Encara,” he began, now in Gravanik, “When did the furniture turn on you?”

She stopped pacing, looked at her chewed down fingernails, counted, re-counted.

“Five days ago, after my trip to the hills.”

“The hills?”

“Yes,” she said, turning to face him directly, “where the star fell Cadryn, we saw it together.” They has indeed, well, that was part of the mystery undone, now he just needed to keep pressing without setting her off again.

“Did you find something, in the hills?”

“No, Nothing!” she howled. Reaching back to an emptied book shelf with one arm, she yanked the entire thing down, sending up a cloud of old dust. The fire swelled, spitting sparks onto the carpet that Encara stomped out angrily. “There was nothing there, nothing but a foul, dank, poisoned hole in the earth. Red mud, and redder waters. Stolen, or escaped, no way to say . . .” she began to pace again.

Cadryn looked around the room again, and noticed them: light-reddish footprints leading deeper into the library. Leaving Encara to her pacing, he followed them. In the back of the first floor he found a small apartment, with a bed, table, and a wall of shelves. In one corner of the room there was damp sack, bright red leaves pouring out of it, on the table a mortar and pestle stained with the same leaves.

Stuffing some of the leaves into his pocket he returned to the entrance. Encara, siting before the flames, rocked on her heels whispering to the ancient curling pages as they burned.

“These loyalties of which the others prattle, to empire, to flag, to comrade, all are like this: so much ash before the flames of our history. There is only true loyalty: that of the beasts . . . to blood, to flesh, to loin. No! Even that betrays, lies, slinks, fangs bared against the trusting hand . . . no, only me, only I, only the singular being . . . is worthy of my trust.”

As her words drifted around the room, Cadryn slipped out a window to seek help.

Cadryn jogged the entire way down to Korbinian’s laboratory off the marshaling yard, his sinuses cracked from taking in lungful after lungful of the dry air. Slowing as he approached the heavy door, he could see light pouring from beneath the threshold, the Alchemist never slept. Still waiting for his pulse to slacken, Cadryn knocked on the door with a fist.

“Come in, mind the spiders,” came the muffled reply.

“Oh joy,” Cadryn said, the door swinging easily on well oil hinges. Sure enough, an intricate network of spider webs fully held the entrance. Steeping gingerly, he managed to avoid an attack from the occupants. Within, the laboratory was fully lit by competing shades of blue and red lamps. Looking at the profusion of webbing around the lamps Cadryn could guess at the reason.

“Just giving them their dose of elixir,” Korbinian said, dusting the webs nearest him with some sort of mister. “Have to keep them tied to me.”

“Naturally,” Cadryn said, and doing his best to avoid further webs moved over join Korbinian near the fireplace. “We have a problem. It’s Encara, she’s gotten into some sort of plant.” He produced the leaves and held them out.

“Oh yes, these,” Korbinian said, taking them and tossing into a pot of suspiciously similar leaves. “Takis the Grim sent a letter about them, says they’re growing all over the Veld now.”

Cadryn took a seat, and seeing Takis’ letter read it for himself. It confirmed his own suspicions after seeing the outcome of Encara’s trip to the site of the star fall. The weed was growing everywhere, spreading rapidly despite the shorter days of the season.

“It’s dangerous,” Cadryn found himself saying. “We don’t even know what it is.”

“Well, I know,” Korbinian replied, and crossing to a rack of books pulled a thin, green spined portfolio down. Opening it, there were drawings of all manner of plants, painstakingly accurate in details. “Here we go, ‘Midnight Ruya’ it’s a dream weed, believed to be of fae origin, and grows by moon light.”

“Well that settles it,” Cadryn said, “I’ll just ask Nine to get rid of it.”

Korbinian laughed at this, his eyes two different colored marbles in the rival lamp light. “Best of luck there, young friend, you may find him less than willing to assist you with such matters.”

Stepping back out into the night, the stars above seemed to be taunting Cadryn as well. At the top of the stairs down to the toll house he nearly tripped over a mass of creeper vines woven into a hat. Picking it up, he could see acorns and other nuts set into the rim like gems in a crown. As he went to put it on, a now familiar voice whispered to him from the direction of the gardens, a warm kiss behind his ear.

“I wouldn’t, friend.”

Hesitating, Cadryn let his hand with the crown fall down at his side and shielded his eyes against the moon’s bright glare with the other. Descending from the upper gardens, no rope or other tool attached to him, came Nine, his body slowly turning like a leaf falling in the still air. His bare feet touching the cobbles silently, the pattern shifted in the vines at his back, admitting light to create a halo as he rose to his full height.

“As ever,” Cadryn said, and was surprised at how tight his chest felt, “your advice is cryptic and begging further questions.”

Nine smiled, always a little too wide, with teeth a little too sharp. A gleaming arc of white that glowed despite the downcoast angle of his sharp face. “I shall speak plainly then; our kind do not brook false kings.”

Cadryn laughed, and held up the acorn crown, “surely this is just a small gift from those little fae in the forest. Felina and I have been finding them in our wake these past few nights.”

Nine took three steps, impossibly closing the distance, and stood beside Cadryn. Turning around and sliding an arm around Cadryn’s waist, he leaned over his shoulder and the smell of a sun bloated corpse poured from his lips with the words he spoke.

“There are no small gifts to us, it is all, quite. Serious.”

Cadryn tried to pull away, but found Nine’s arm as yielding and cold as an iron strap against his stomach. Relaxing, he offered up the crown. “Well, are you not their king? Take it.”

Nine laughed in birdsong, releasing his grip as smoothly as it came, and spun around Cadryn to stand before him. Crown now in hand, dangling from thin fingers.

“I would so love to be a king again, in truth. Alas, that is not possible, for all that I have belongs to Him.” Suddenly sullen in carriage, Nine, placed the crown back into Cadryn’s hands and stepped past him. “I would not sully this gift by accepting it, my apologies.”

“So,” Cadryn said, spinning the loop of vines and watching the wind return through the vines with a gentle murmuring. “If I can’t wear this, and you won’t take it, what should I do with it?”

“To us, a gift is merely the reminder of a debt. A marker. If Ignored, or unclaimed, we seek greater symbols. You see, Cadryn, we do hate being bound.”

Cadryn shook his head, “Well, no offense to the might of the fae, but I don’t see how your tiny bushy and tailed kin can help.”

“Ask, and see,” Nine whispered into his ear.

When Cadryn turned to see what exactly he should ask about, the fae king was gone. Alone once more with his thoughts, Cadryn leaned back against the solid stone of the Redoubt and considered the Keepers situation. What would be good to ask for? A few rather frivolous ideas bounded through his mind like hares, but they gave way to the plodding of more serious issues. Zahkar, the Necromancer . . . no, he was too powerful and the thought of tiny little corpses buzzing though the night sent a shudder through him.

No, something less dangerous, but still a problem. Then it came to him, the alien weed from the star.

“One strange thing deserves another,” he whispered to the crown, and walking over to the vines hung it off a branch. “Get rid of the weeds, my little friends.”