Christopher Ryan had not moved since he’d started speaking. Through the window behind him, the sun-dappled sea glimmered.

Onus looked at Benno with thin, remorseful eyes.

He didn’t know, Benno thought. He didn’t know any of this.

“Edda explained everything to me,” Christopher Ryan went on. “She told me that Annabel’s ability to heal was why she was here. She told me about the Gardens, and that when Annabel visited them she wished to be with me. These words to my ears corrected so many dark days and nights of resentment and solitude. She had finally come to be freed from her illusions. She finally saw me as her true love. And now we were here together, thanks to Edda.

“Edda took me to her. I will admit that for the first few days of my being here, Annabel and I hardly left our room. I am not trying to brag, just explaining it as it happened. I started to think that it would just be like that forever, that no one would ever interrupt us.

“But of course there was work to do. Edda had orchestrated all of this—a harbinger of love—but not for free. And I was happy to help her in any pursuit. I owed her everything after all. So when she sent me on my first errand, I approached it vigilantly and with the same tenacity I would approach matters of my love for Annabel. That first errand was straight forward: There was someone who was harassing Edda, and Edda needed them to stop. I went in and persuaded them. Edda knew I would be good for this work. One can do anything when one has as much motivation as I did, which was the knowledge that Annabel was waiting for me when I returned.

“I did well with that first one. After that, about once a week, Edda would come to my and Annabel’s room and inform me of something else that needed my attention. I would go forth and see to it, and then return to the Inn and to our room, and Annabel and I would make love for days and days at a time. I never much saw anything outside our room. The other members of Edda’s crew were standoffish. I think it was because they were jealous of the extent to which Edda trusted me with the most delicate matters. That and the true love Annabel and I enjoyed, which most people never get to know.

“Years went by like this. Then one day Edda came to fetch me. She was… different that day. More severe than usual. I see that now in retrospect. At the time I didn’t much notice. I was drunk with love, drunk with Annabel. I got dressed and met Edda in her study. She explained to me that there was a man. She’d been watching him for years, though she didn’t say why. She needed to send him a message. Something he would be sure to get, that would get his attention. An interruption to the course of his life, she said. Normally she allowed me to work out the details, but in this case she had everything planned out. There was even a backstory—a version of myself invented for this errand. I didn’t fully understand. But Edda had been good to me. Beyond that. Edda had saved my life.

“I did what she said. I filled up my wallet with the fabricated documentation. I kissed Annabel goodbye, and told her I would be right back. Edda brought me to the Realm—there was an issue with the Gemstoke that day, she said, something to do with system maintenance. I did everything exactly as she instructed. I rented the car. I drove into the Catskills. I found the road she’d told me to find, and parked on the shoulder beside the mile marker she described. And I waited until I saw the headlights approaching the intersection. Edda had told me exactly when they’d be there, and they were right on time. I pulled onto the road and I hit the gas. It all went exactly as she’d said it would.

“She’d told me to meet her after, in a clearing nearby. She said she’d have the Shenandoah there waiting to take me back to the Inn. I ran to the clearing as fast as I could; the collision had hurt my leg a bit, but nothing serious. And Edda was there, just where she’d said she’d be, the Shenandoah idling. I remember it was hailing. I started to board, but she stopped me. She told me the errand wasn’t finished. She hadn’t told me there was more. I asked her what I needed to do next.

“‘Pay your dues,’ she said.

"And then she left. Just like that. I didn’t understand. I ran along a road. I found a barn—serendipitous, I know—and sought shelter from the hail. I just wanted to be back with Annabel. The police found me soon. I kept expecting Edda to come back for me. But she didn’t. They charged me with murder. I went to prison. I spend my time thinking about Annabel. I knew she was waiting for me back at the Inn. It was only fifteen years. I kept my head down. My first parole hearing was denied, but it was promising. My second was granted. I only had a month left. I couldn’t sleep in anticipation of my release. I wrote Annabel a poem. I paced and paced. That last week, with my release imminent, felt longer than the previous six years. But I was finally returning to her. Finally. I missed her so.

“But then I got a phone call. I’d only met Mother once, briefly, when I accompanied Edda on an errand to the Family’s mansion. Mother informed me over the phone that an arrangement had been made. Edda owed some debts, and couldn’t repay them, and so had come to an agreement with Mother that I would be serving out a sentence on those debts. I would leave this prison directly into Mother’s custody. Again I didn’t understand. I would have contacted Edda, but had no way to. There was nothing I could do.

“And that’s about it. At least the first prison had other people in it, not that I spoke much to anyone. But the second prison—Mother’s prison—it was empty, and dark. Just me and my thoughts, all of which concerned Annabel. I knew she was waiting for me—that she would wait for me forever—but I didn’t know if I would ever make it back to her. No one ever came to visit me. Not until you two showed up.”

Benno had sat down on the high-backed leather-upholstered chair. He held a hand over his mouth, his eyes settled on the carpet where it met the sofa, but seeing nothing. He felt like he should be having a million thoughts, but there were only the words—

—dlrosulguthdlorsulemoliundlorsuldecalo—

—unfurling, endless, never repeating.

Onus watched him, his hand similarly gating his mouth, his orange eyes wet. The bruise on his throat had already started to lighten and yellow.

“I told you it might be awkward,” Christopher Ryan said, offering another smug grin.

Benno sat up and cleared his throat, as if doing so would help him focus. “I don’t…” he trailed off, looking past Christopher Ryan at the ocean. “Why…” he tried, then rubbed his face. “Why was she watching me before the… the accident?”

Christopher Ryan shrugged. “Something to do with that cat.”

“Recipient?” Benno glanced over his shoulder, toward the hallway. “The first time I saw Recipient was the day before I ended up here.” He traced the pyramid with his index finger, down the bridge of his nose.

“It wasn’t Recipient,” Christopher Ryan said. “It was the other one. Electorate. The big one. And it wasn’t you the cat was following.”

“Then who?”

Christopher Ryan shrugged again.

Benno got up and headed down the hallway.

#

The couch-sized cat—Electorate—looked up at Benno from her large, sleepy eyes.

Recipient was nowhere to be seen. The bed, with its black sheets, however, had been made. Onus, Benno assumed. Of course he’d been using Edda’s bed.

Electorate watched Benno as he approached, betraying nothing but an unflinching feline boredom. Benno knelt beside the cat and reached out cautiously. She allowed him to place his hand on her large, warm head, though she seemed unimpressed.

“Who were you following?” Benno whispered.

Electorate blinked. Like Recipient, she wore a collar, and dangling from the collar was a flat glass triangle. In it, Benno saw himself, reflected… Except…

The back of his head. He was looking at the back of his head. Close, nestled into the hair, as if someone were clinging to his back…

He stood and spun around. The room was empty.

The knelt back down and leaned forward. In the triangle, through the tangle of his hair, he could see Electorate’s collar, and in it, smaller, the same tangle of hair, and another collar, and onward, forever. He turned around again, then back. Close, nestled into his hair…

As if someone was clinging to his back…

Benno’s heart echoed in the bottomless cavern of his abdomen.

Recipient had the same collar, the same flat glass triangle. Benno had seen himself reflected in it, numerous times. But he’d also seen something else reflected in it… When he was in D’doak’s shed, dreaming another life, he’d seen dark, sooty walls. A candle. He’d seen the shed. He’d seen the shed because Recipient hadn’t really been in Benno’s dream. Recipient had been in the shed, looking at its walls and the flickering candle.

Benno touched the glass triangle softly. His eyes filled with hot tears. “How…”

He remembered something August had said: Only Sul has jurisdiction over death.

Only Sul.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

Electorate blinked. She wasn’t really looking at Benno. She was looking into someone else, through someone else’s eyes. Someone else who was looking at Benno, as if they’d climbed onto his back and nestled their face into his hair…

—dlorsulrimuddlorsulavrosdlorsulanagruh—

The cat lowered her head onto her pillow.

—dlorsullandlorsultencedlorsulmesk—

Benno stood slowly and looked up at the empty room. “Is it you?”

—dlorsulagandlorsulpathdlorsularlegor—

“Are you alive?”

And though nothing happened, no sound, so movement, not even the impression of a reply, Benno felt, deep in the well of his heart, that he’d received an answer.

He wiped his eyes. He left Edda’s bedroom and walked back down the hall, and by the time he arrived in the sitting room something had formed into place, and so much else had shattered.

Onus looked up from his palm when Benno entered.

Christopher Ryan turned from the window and fixed Benno with another smug grin.

Benno cordoned his new cascade of thoughts and fears aside. “Is Annabel still here?” he asked. “Here in the Inn?”

Christopher Ryan’s grin widened. “Yes,” he said. “Of course she is. She’s waited for me all this time. It’s taken every ounce of my will not to run to her, but of course it was important that we all speak first. The men. And after fourteen years, what’s another few minutes?”

Benno nodded. “I’d love to meet her.”

#

He led Benno to a door Benno had seen before. He’d passed it the day he arrived here, on his way to meet the Haruspex. He was with someone, but he couldn’t remember who. Maybe he’d been alone. It felt like a million years ago.

BAD ROOM

Benno stood behind Christopher Ryan, who tsked and shook his head.

“Vandals,” he said. “They were always jealous of us. Of our love. No matter.” He opened the door and entered, flicking on the lights as he did.

Benno proceeded slowly. There was a flat screen TV on the right wall, with a single faux-leather reclining chair facing it, and a low coffee table with absolutely nothing on it. There was an electric guitar on a stand, which appeared never to have been played. There was a rack of color coated dumbbells which, like the guitar, appeared untouched. Gray blinds were drawn over the window. There was a smell that reminded Benno of bandaids and medicine.

On the left side of the room, the twin bed was made up with dark green bedding. Standing behind Christopher Ryan, Benno could just see a length of brown hair and the curve of an arm; there was somebody sitting on the bed.

“My darling.” Christopher Ryan hurried to the bed.

Benno stood at the door. Christopher Ryan’s body continued to block his view of the person save for the jeans and gray sweater and shoulder-length hair. They did not move. They did not speak.

“I’m so sorry.” Christopher Ryan climbed onto the bed and crawled toward the person until he was straddling them, their socked feet sticking out between his legs. “I never would have left you for so long if I could’ve helped it. But there were things beyond my control. I will never let it happen again. And I am here now.” He leaned down and kissed the person’s face.

Benno cleared his throat.

“Excuse us,” Christopher Ryan said, turning, his face flushed and his smug grin wider than ever. “We got carried away in the passion of our reunion.” He climbed off the unmoving person and sat crosslegged on the edge of the bed. “Benno, meet Annabel. Annabel, this is Benno.”

Benno took a step toward the bed. He should’ve felt disgusted, or enraged. He had enough reason for both—for endless waves of both—and no one could blame him. But he felt neither. And in feeling neither, he felt a dull sorrow.

Her skin looked baggy. It reminded Benno—in a regrettable and macabre instant—of the frogs he used to dissect with his 9th grade biology students. Something about the frogs, after having their organs removed, made their skin appear oversized. Husks, Benno used to think of them as. It was the same with Annabel. In fact, her skin appeared more or less undefiled, other than that one of her eyelids was sealed shut, and her lips were split in a series of deep trenches, and her nostrils were dramatically different sizes. But the way the skin draped on the body, across the body’s bones, like a sheet thrown over an old piece of furniture—not to mention her unsparing stillness—was proof that something devastating had occurred, though what, exactly, was unclear. Edda had claimed she’d died trying to enter the Gardens, though this, to Benno, as he stood looking at the bed, seemed uncertain. Regardless, what Benno knew about Annabel’s regenerative qualities presented a feasible explanation for the unfortunate state she was in now, whatever had caused it: Her body, it seemed, continued to regenerate itself even after a trauma so ruinous that the life within it had fled. But the regeneration was without the same order and elegance it would have been with a life—a soul—to guide it. And what remained was something pitiful. Something for which Benno felt profoundly sad, even if it could not receive that sadness from him.

“Aren’t you going to say hello?” Christopher Ryan asked, his brow furrowed with annoyance.

What had Edda been thinking, to bring this man into the folds of her operation? Had she simply seen an opportunity to exploit a sick individual with the resources she had on hand? Or had she truly loved Annabel—as she claimed—and her manipulation of Christopher Ryan—his errands, and his rewards—was all a means to a punitive fate? Perhaps it was somewhere in the middle. Perhaps it was something else entirely.

All Benno knew for sure was that this was wrong. It was so fucking wrong.

“What’s the matter with you?” Christopher Ryan asked, his hands outspread. “Why are you being so rude?”

And how much, after all was said and done, was Christopher Ryan really to blame? More than Benno, but less than Edda. At least as far as the death of Benno’s family. There were additional atrocities, for which Christopher Ryan and only Christopher Ryan was responsible. At the very least he should be locked away for the rest of his life. At the very least.

But Benno Haim was not the justice system.

I can be, though…

“Make him look like me,” Jason Rogers wheezed in Benno’s ear.

Benno looked down at Holes, clinging to the front of his shirt. “Anything to add?”

Holes shrugged. “You don’t have to kill him.”

#

Only afterward did Benno realize he could have simply used handcuffs.

Instead, he’d MacGyvered a whole system of pulleys, employing chains and twine, to allow Christopher Ryan enough movement that he could reach the far corner—where he would urinate and defecate—and the corner near the door—where Gemma was instructed to leave water and enough food for him to survive indefinitely—but could not use his arms or reach the door. The whole thing took Benno almost two hours to rig up, and he was proud of the work, despite how macabre the exercise of troubleshooting such a contraption might be.

Christopher Ryan, to his benefit, said very little while Benno worked. He sat against the wall, his arms crossed tightly over his chest, staring at the Haruspex.

The Haruspex stared back, seeing nothing.

Benno tested the chains anchored to the wall. He of course could have pulled them free, but from a moderate exertion of force they held tight.

“Okay,” he said.

Christopher Ryan crawled, silent, into position. His complacency did not stir in Benno the solicitude it might have; rather, it confirmed to Benno just how broken—and guilty—this man in fact was, and just how necessary it was to lock him away.

“Make sure you can reach your food,” Benno said when he was done, indicating the corner near the door.

Christopher Ryan, his hands fastened behind his back, shuffled on his knees to the corner.

“And your bathroom,” Benno said.

Christopher Ryan shuffled to the other corner.

Benno nodded and turned to the Haruspex. “How long will this last you?” he asked.

The Haruspex’s foggy eyes seemed to reject Gemma’s light. “Long enough,” she said.

Benno snatched up Gemma and took a final scan of the sooty, foul smelling room. “I’m going to dig another grave,” he said, and then swung open the heavy door and exited into the hallway. And just before the door swung shut behind him, stifling the sound, Christopher Ryan had begun to plead and cry.

#

Onus stood up when Benno reentered Edda’s apartment. The bruise on his neck was, by now, hardly visible, but he still winced faintly. Similarly, the scars that had covered every inch of his skin when Benno rescued him from the Bathhouse were no longer discernible.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Edda had him listed in her personnel log as a high priority crew member with confidential knowledge about you, specifically. I assumed he would know her thinking—or at least have some information about how she was attempting to locate the Gray Wastes. I thought he’d be able to help us. I truly didn’t know.”

Benno sat and waited until Onus had sat down too. “He did help us,” he said.

“How?”

Benno took a second to gather his thoughts, loath to say anything he didn’t know for sure. “I had assumed that Edda only took an interest in me because of my condition,” he said. “I mean, that’s what she led me to believe: she was looking for someone who could get into the Gardens. She found Annabel, but Annabel couldn’t do it, so she kept looking, and she found me. Even knowing what I know now, about Chavanuck and Sul and your father, that would still hold true. But it wasn’t like that. Christopher Ryan proves it.”

Onus nodded slowly.

“Before the accident,” Benno went on. “I was normal. I could get hurt. I could get sick. I aged normally. There was nothing about me that would’ve been of any interest to Edda. It was the accident itself that changed me. The accident that she orchestrated.”

Onus’ eyes faltered, briefly, to the floor.

“Which means there was already something about me—or about someone close to me—that was important. At first I didn’t know what or who this could be…”

Onus waited.

“Edda wasn’t watching me,” Benno said. “She was watching Sul.” He ran his finger along the edge of the pyramid. “She might not have been able to find the Gardens, but somehow, with that cat in her bedroom, she was able to watch Sul. She was able to watch Sul dream. That cat, Electorate, is still watching Sul dream. And Sul is watching him dream.”

“Who?”

—dlorsulslencedlorsulalburndlorsulfeldlorsullingun—

“Who?” Onus repeated, his eyes darting a complicated shape around the apartment.

Benno stroked Hole’s petals as the flower dozed on his shoulder. “Tell me about the rest of Sul’s Wardens,” he said. “I think it’s time I killed them all.”

#

They spoke until the sun traded places with the moon, which cast a silver path across the water. Then, eventually, Benno stood and stretched his arms over his head.

“I need to sleep,” he said. “Not long. A few hours.”

Onus stretched also, his long arms spanning the entire width of the sofa. “Good idea. Come fetch me when it’s time to go.” He shuffled toward the hallway.

“You don’t have to,” Benno said.

Onus stopped and turned. “Don’t have to what?”

“You don’t have to come with me.”

A long moment unfurled.

“Of course I do.” Onus turned and disappeared down the hallway, and a few seconds later the sound of a door clicked shut.

Benno returned to his room. He placed Holes on the righthand pillow, undressed, and flopped down perpendicular on the bed atop the sheets.

The Trickster.

The Chieftain.

The Eyes of Horus.

The Scattered King.

Benno rolled onto his side.

The Trickster.

The Chieftain.

The Eyes of Horus.

The Scattered King.

And finally Sul.

He sat up. Back in Edda’s apartment he’d been so exhausted he could barely keep his eyes open. But now, with the option of sleep, he found himself alert. More than that. Vigilant. Engaged. He was ready to go.

But he’d promised Onus a few hours of sleep. And there was no rush—not after fourteen years. He got up and put his pants back on, then crept from the room, careful to avoid waking Holes, and into the room next door—266362. He made his way through the vines to the drawer and pulled out his cell phone, which surprisingly—perhaps influenced by Gemma or some quality of the Hillstul Inn—turned on right away. He sat on the oily sheets of the twin bed, nestled amongst the lush plant, and scrolled through his photos. He liked the one of the three of them at home on Christmas—his wife’s holiday, since Benno had none—all wearing matching checkered pajamas, his son’s little arms wrapped around Benno’s neck, his legs locked around his abdomen, his face half-buried in Benno’s hair.

Climbing the Daddy tree, he called it. It used to be his favorite thing.

“I didn’t know,” Benno said softly, tracing his son’s face, tears disappearing into the forest of his beard. “I didn’t know…”