Dead But Once

by Auston Habershaw

  “You have me in quite a spot.” Tyvian smirked, devoting his attention to the game board.

  They were alone and, of course, it was late. Tyvian’s private sitting room was on the second floor in the southeast corner of the House of Eddon, his—well, no, Hool’s—private manse. One balcony was closed and its curtains drawn, and through it trickled the muted din of the gaming tables below. On the opposite side of the room the other balcony stood open, the stars spread out to the horizon, a sparkling accompaniment to a full moon. The city of Eretheria lay beneath, its steeples and spires gleaming with the silvery glow of starlight. No more than two miles distant, the Empty Tower of the Peregrine Palace pierced the sky like an ivory horn, dwarfing everything around it. It presented a phallic symbol that was difficult to ignore.

  If she were going to kill him, Tyvian thought, this would be the perfect time. His bedchamber was only steps away, the mood was right, the wine was good . . .

  “Do you resign?” Voth asked, her good eye sparkling. A smile tugged at the edge of her mouth. “I had expected a better match from a man of your supposed gifts.”

  Tyvian considered his wineglass. Not poisoned. He’d just poured it himself, from his own—no, Hool’s own—private stores. Voth never had the chance to put anything in it. He’d had both her hands in sight the whole time. He picked it up and sipped. The heady flavor of a fine Akrallian white, still cool, washed over his tongue, tingling all the right spots. “If I were to resign, would we talk business then?”

  “What else would we discuss, hmmm?” Voth tossed her hair and leaned forward against the table, giving Tyvian a thrilling view—should he choose to take it.

  Tyvian chose to. “I can think of a handful of topics.”

  One burgundy-nailed finger twirled a single ringlet of her hair. “Really? Do elaborate.”

  She might have a knife, Tyvian thought. Were he trying to kill himself, though, a knife wouldn’t be his first choice. Tyvian had a deserved reputation of being a good knife-fighter, and any bladed contest would constitute a risk for the assassin. Assassins hated risk.

  Voth sipped her wine. “You seem lost in thought, Tyvian. I hope I’m not distracting you.” She smiled, knowing full well she was. That hand kept twirling her curls. Tyvian could imagine his own hands doing much the same thing. He could imagine taking a great, big handful of that beautiful black hair and running his fingers through it.

  Poisoned hair? It was possible. She probably wouldn’t be playing with it so much, though. Even if sorcerously abjured against the poison herself, the risk would be pointless. She didn’t need to toy with her hair to seduce him.

  Wait, was he actually being seduced? Tyvian cocked his head to one side. “Miss Voth, are you trying to seduce me?”

  She produced a sultry laugh—the deep-throated kind that made men’s hearts feel like dice in a tumbler. One finger traced the rim of her wineglass in a slow circle. “I thought you already had a woman in your life.”

  Tyvian glanced at the spirit clock behind Voth—two in the morning. Myreon usually didn’t get back until after dawn. Plenty of time. “Who says I can have only one at a time?”

  Voth grinned and rose, then walked around the table toward him. “How nice to hear.”

  This was it. Probably. Tyvian got up as well, then backed away. “So I take it you want to table our negotiations on the price of bladecrystals for another time?”

  She wrapped her fingers into the lace of his collar and pushed him back against the wall. “Very much so.”

  Her perfume was faint, but expensive—a subtle scent, making her closeness all the more inviting. She leaned against him, hands snaking up his sides to his shoulders, and pulled him down so she could kiss him.

  Tyvian decided to kiss her back. If she had poison lips, it was too damned late anyway—he may as well enjoy his last few moments alive. Her tongue darted between his lips and she pressed against him even more tightly, moaning softly. Her hands crawled higher on his shoulders, tore off his lace collar and moved toward his bare neck.

  “Ah!” Tyvian felt a sharp jolt of pain and he leapt away from Voth. A needle! A poison needle!

  “What?” Voth blinked.

  Tyvian examined himself—no needle. No injury. Then what . . . Oh. It was that stupid ring—the plain iron band he could not remove and which had very particular opinions on his moral conduct. He glared down at his hand. “Dammit all!”

  “Is something wrong?” Voth came closer, extending her arms to embrace him. “Are you hurt?”

  “No, I’m fine, I just—” He stopped himself. Voth moved to cup his face in her hands, lips again parted for a kiss. Her hands. Those nails. Long, pointed, burgundy-lacquered nails. Of course.

  Tyvian grabbed one of her hands by the wrist and quickly wrapped it behind her back, pinning her arm. She yelped with shock. “Tyvian!”

  He piloted her across the room and pushed her onto the sofa. “Very clever, Adatha! You almost had me, too.”

  Voth sat up. “What are you talking about?”

  Tyvian kept his distance, ready to slip the stiletto from his sleeve at the slightest sign of Voth coiling to attack. “Bloodroot poison can be made into a lacquer and layered under the tips of fingernails—blends in perfectly with exactly that shade of nail polish, too. One scratch on the throat and I would be as good as dead. Very clever.”

  Voth blinked. “You . . . you think I’m trying to kill you?”

  Tyvian rolled his eyes. “Oh, here we go with the feigned-innocence act—spare me, I beg you. You’re about as innocent as a pit viper and we both know it.”

  “I wasn’t planning to kill you!”

  Tyvian pulled over a chair, reversed it, and straddled it. “That’s exactly what you would say if you were planning to kill me!”

  Voth folded her arms. “And what if I weren’t planning to kill you? What would I say then?”

  Tyvian scowled. “Prove it!”

  “Prove what?”

  Tyvian pointed to her throat. “Scratch your own damned throat—let’s see if you die.”

  “No!”

  “Ha!”

  “I am not going to claw my own throat because you’re paranoid!” Voth put on a very convincing pout.

  “Oh, what, and I’m supposed to comfort you now? I suppose you’ll whip up some tears next.” Tyvian affected a high-pitched voice. “‘Oh, woe is me. Tyvian Reldamar insulted my honor, boo-hoo!’”

  Voth looked away, her arms still folded. Tears did, in fact, well up beneath her good eye. She didn’t say anything, though. She only sat there, mutely weeping. “I . . . I thought you liked me.”

  The ring gave Tyvian a pinch. He snarled at it, “Don’t you start.”

  Voth glared at him with her glassy good eye. Her whole face colored red. “Do you know how hard it is being a woman in the smuggling trade? When . . .” She snuffled. “When am I supposed to meet a man who will accept me? Hmmm?”

  The ring pinched harder. Tyvian clenched his teeth, but said nothing.

  “I mean, look at my face, Tyvian!” Voth pointed to her scar, her dead eye. “Do you think I have many romantic prospects? I have to keep the walls up all the time, you know—always on guard, always ready for betrayal . . .”

  The ring was like a vise on his hand. Tyvian growled under his breath, “Not on your life, you stupid thing.”

  “And . . . and then I meet you, and you’re handsome and charming and kind to me. I . . . I thought we were kindred spirits, you and I!” Voth was openly crying now, wiping tears away with a corner of a throw pillow. She hunched her shoulders, letting the sobs wrack her compact frame. “I . . . I thought we were in love, dammit, and . . . and it was just another game to you, wasn’t it?”

  Tyvian sighed. “No. It wasn’t a game. I . . . I promise.” The ring blazed at the lie.

  Voth pressed her face into the pillow. “Go away! I won’t have you see me like this! Just . . . just go away!”

  Tyvian looked around. “But these are my chambers.�
�

  Voth pointed to the door and kept crying into the pillow. Her voice was muffled. “I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life!”

  Tyvian stood up, the ring still digging into his hand. He knew it would do that all night, too. He moved to leave, but it pinched him still harder. “Hang it all,” he grumbled.

  Slowly, reluctantly, he came to sit on the couch beside Voth. He pulled out his pocket handkerchief. He nudged her shoulder. “Here.”

  Voth dropped the pillow and, with a precise slash, raked her fingernails across Tyvian’s left cheek. Fiery pain blossomed all through the side of his face. “Gotcha!” She winked.

  Tyvian lunged for her, but she was too quick. She ran to the open balcony and jumped. Hand clutched to his face, he chased after her, but the poison was already making him dizzy, and he tripped over a chair leg. “Dammit!” he growled.

  “Stupid . . . stupid Krothing RING!”

  Chapter 3

  A Very Public Murder

  Artus had just about resolved to go upstairs and kick in Tyvian’s door when there was a crash above him. He looked up to see the doors to Tyvian’s balcony burst open and Tyvian himself stagger out, hands clutching his face, blood running down his arms and staining his sleeves crimson. “Hrrr . . . Artus!” he shouted, his voice garbled, as though his face were swollen. “P-P-Poison!”

  People pointed and screamed.

  Tyvian staggered, evidently trying to stumble back into his room, but lost his balance and tipped over the balcony railing and plummeted toward the floor.

  Brana was already in motion. He flew across the room in one stupendous leap and caught Tyvian before he bashed his brains out on the hardwood floor. In the wake of Brana’s superhuman feat, a dozen people lay dazed on the floor, knocked over like ninepins.

  Artus found himself fighting the press of the crowd to get to Tyvian. “Out of the way! Out of the way, dammit!”

  He needn’t have bothered. Brana hoisted Tyvian on one shoulder and barked, “Danger!” He then plowed through the press of concerned nobility in Artus’s direction. Brana had grown in strength and size in the time since they’d moved here, but the shroud stayed more or less the same, so Artus had forgotten that, beneath the illusion, his “little” brother was now six feet and over two hundred pounds of pure, fuzzy gnollish muscle.

  “Make room, people! Make some room!” Artus shouted, and Sir Damon cleared off a t’suul table so that Tyvian could be laid down. His legs dangled off the edge, but his body fit, so it was good enough. Tyvian’s face was swollen to twice its normal size and his whole body was some strange combination of twitchy and limp. “Tyv . . .” Artus stopped himself. “Waymar! Waymar! Wake up!”

  Brana was sniffing the wound on Tyvian’s face. He got some strange looks, but nobody said anything. “Poison!”

  Sir Damon took Tyvian’s pulse, his face grim. “Bloodroot, looks like. Seen it before. Very fast acting.”

  Artus looked at Brana. “Tyvian’s room—get the wands!” Brana charged away, running on all fours even though he still wore his shroud.

  Sir Damon shook his head. “He’s going to die, lad.”

  “The hell he is!” Artus shouted. He looked around at all the people standing there, staring. “What are all you people looking at? Huh? Either help or get the hell out!”

  One of the nobles—the Vora squire from earlier—blinked. “I . . . I beg your pardon?”

  From the back of the crowd, Hool’s voice penetrated the furor. “You heard him! All of you people get out of my house!”

  She was standing just inside the main entrance, her shroud depicting her as wearing a gown of silver and white that bloomed out from her hips like the petals of some rare flower. She did not look happy.

  No one, it turned out, was quite willing to meet Lady Hool’s eerie copper gaze—her true eye color, though everyone assumed it was a glamour intended to unnerve others. The guests began filing out immediately, with Sir Damon helping in calling their coaches around to pick them up. Artus was only loosely aware of this—most of his attention was on Tyvian, lying there on the table, his skin turning a deeper shade of gray with every passing moment.

  Brana came back and dumped a half-dozen wands on the table. “Got them!”

  Artus looked at them. “Dammit! Which one’s the purification wand?”

  Brana shrugged. “Dunno.”

  Artus picked up one wand and then the next—they all looked more or less the same, with only faint variations. Dammit, where the hell is Myreon? “Which one did you get from Tyvian’s wine closet?”

  Brana cocked his head. “Ummm . . .”

  Artus felt a lace of pure panic trace its way across his back. Gods, Tyvian could die! All the times Tyvian had saved him, and now here he was, and . . .

  “Kroth take it!” Artus covered his eyes and tapped his fingers on random wands. “Handras, Udent, Varner, too, Ezeliar, please be true!”

  It was a slender one of some kind of rosewood with a tip like the bud of a tulip. Artus waved it over Tyvian, wondering what the trigger word was.

  Hool loomed over him. “Is he dead yet?”

  “No!” Artus shouted at her. “He’s not going to die! He can’t die!”

  Hool sniffed at Tyvian’s face. Tyvian was now completely still and all color had drained from his face. “He seems pretty dead.”

  Artus shook the wand. “Dammit, come on!”

  There was a glow at the tip of the wand and then Tyvian convulsed once, every muscle contracting in one body-wide seizure. Then, as quickly as it started, it stopped and Tyvian fell limp again. He rolled off the table. Artus caught him and held him on the ground. He felt stiff and cold.

  He wasn’t breathing.

  Tears crept into Artus’s eyes. “No . . . no . . . it . . . it ain’t fair.”

  Hool laid a hand on Artus’s head. “I will eat whoever killed him. I promise.” She sighed. “It was probably one of the people who owes me money. That’s a lot of people to eat.” She looked at Artus. “It might take me a few weeks to eat them all.”

  Brana bowed his head and whined.

  Tyvian coughed. Once. Twice. A ragged breath was drawn in, let out. He groaned. “Krrrrrooooth . . .”

  Artus leapt up. “He’s . . . he’s alive!”

  Hool took a deep breath. “Good. I’m not hungry.”

  Artus stared down at the smuggler, who was beginning to get color back in his cheeks. “But . . . but he was totally dead. You all saw that, right? How . . . how did that happen?”

  Hool snorted. “With him, who knows? Maybe he did this on purpose for some stupid reason. Just get him into bed.”

  Brana helped Artus lift Tyvian up. “Maybe the wand fixed him!”

  Artus shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’m . . . I’m just not that lucky.”

  “No,” Hool said, pointing at the unconscious Tyvian, “but he is.”

  Tyvian opened his eyes to see the early dawn light chasing shadows across the ivory moldings of his bedroom ceiling. It definitely was his bedroom, too. He was alive. Artus actually managed to save his life after all. I’m going to have to raise his allowance after this.

  Correction: Hool would have to raise his allowance.

  Tyvian tried to sit up. Except he didn’t move. Not one bit. His whole body, as it turned out, was numb and stiff as a fencing dummy.

  Idiot boy! He must have used the wrong antidote or something. Maybe snickerbark extract—that never worked properly. Tyvian wanted to scowl, but his face was currently opposed to much in the way of expression. Or, at least, it was so numb he had very little idea what kinds of expressions he was making.

  Second correction: Hool would have to dock his allowance, the idiot.

  He was probably drunk, Tyvian thought. This is just the kind of botched job a drunk teenager would pull.

  The house was utterly quiet; another late night in the House of Eddon, this one probably later than usual. Tyvian was alone and would be for hours, so he laid there, a prisoner in his o
wn flesh, trying to work the feeling back into his face. After a while, everything started to tingle and burn. He took it as a good sign.

  As he did this, he brooded over his situation. Adatha Voth had tried to kill him. That wasn’t terribly upsetting in and of itself, but what was upsetting was just how close she’d come to pulling it off. He was getting sloppy. Losing his edge. But for the damned ring, he might have killed her before she had the chance to scratch him. He could have held a knife to her throat, maybe broken her hand. But no. The ring, stupid dunce that it was, had fallen for her wounded-lover bit like a heartsick imbecile and dragged him along with it.

  There was more to it than that, though. When last he saw her, his mother—the retired Archmage of the Ether—had told him that the ring operated by collecting those parts of him that were good and noble. Though she lied about most things, for some reason Tyvian felt inclined to believe her in this, as it was the only way he figured the ring could have that much power over him. The ring was a reflection of his better self—an artificially applied conscience—so, on some level, he had felt badly for hurting Voth’s “feelings” and he had wanted her to feel better. The thing that bothered him was why that might be. Voth was just a bit of fun—a bit of a thrill, that was all.

  Right?

  Gradually, Tyvian found he could use his neck a bit. He tried lifting his head, and it was as though he were lighting his shoulders on fire. He kept trying. If nothing else, it was a bit of variety.

  He thought about Voth and what she had meant to him. She was a hard woman, deadly and ruthless. A woman who worked in the shadows but was no stranger to the halls of power. In short, the woman reminded Tyvian of himself—his old self. The self he’d lost the day he’d leapt out of that burning spirit engine over three years ago.

  Now look at me, he told himself, glaring at nothing in particular. Almost murdered in my own home, lying in bed like an invalid. Pretty soon Brana will probably trot in and bring me something to eat. Probably feed me like a child. The thought was enough of a jolt that he was, at last, able to lift his head enough to see the whole of his room . . .