Dead But Once

by Auston Habershaw

  But Tyvian found himself without an appetite. “You did what?”

  Myreon grimaced and she quickly knocked back a tumbler of whisky. “I was trying to help. I couldn’t just . . . just sit there in that house and do nothing.”

  Tyvian closed his eyes and shook his head, trying to get the thousand thoughts rushing around his mind to hold still long enough to form something coherent. “So you taught peasants to use sorcery because . . . because you were bored?”

  Myreon rolled her eyes. “Dammit, Tyvian—don’t you care about anything? Doesn’t it bother you that these people are suffering because of what your brother did? Because of what we failed to prevent? Do you ever even think about it?”

  Tyvian took a long, deep breath. He pointed to the third person at their table. “Who is that?”

  The person in question was a teenage girl who looked as though she’d been kicked in the face by a horse. She had blood all down the front of her dress, her fingernails were chipped, her hands black with filth, and she had the distant stare of somebody who’d recently seen something they had yet to fully process. “This is Bree Newsome,” Myreon said. “Say hello, Bree.”

  Bree looked Tyvian up and down. In his ill-fitting peasant garb, he rather doubted he cut a fine figure. “Are you . . . are you the one who can help us?”

  “Who the hell is ‘us’?”

  “Those people, back at the toll house? Remember them?” Myreon pointed off into space somewhere, evidently in the direction of said toll house. “Those were people like Bree, but unlike Bree, they didn’t have me to stand up for them. They didn’t have me to teach them how to stand up for themselves.”

  Tyvian looked the wretched girl up and down. “Well, she certainly seems to have benefitted from your guidance.”

  The girl’s hand flashed out and slapped Tyvian across the cheek. “You take that back! You take it back about her! She done more for me and mine than you can know! It’s my fault what happened! It’s our fault!” Tears welled in her eyes. She clutched her dress to her eyes as she began to weep.

  Tyvian felt the urge to slap the girl right back, but the ring flared to life and he let his hand lie still. He glared at Myreon. “I suppose you don’t think this is your fault either.”

  Myreon placed a soothing hand on Bree’s shoulder. The girl leaned against her, and Myreon embraced her. The mage’s own eyes were glassy. “I know what I did. I know what I can do. It’s not enough, Tyvian. There are riots in the Ayventry District because of me. Count Andluss is dead because of me, and the gods know how many others were murdered today in the riots afterward. And it’s only beginning.”

  “Andluss is dead? Kroth!” Tyvian stared at her, shaking his head. “What in flying hell do you want me to say? Good job? Congratulations, Myreon, you’ve given a pack of undereducated, bloodthirsty laborers the means to vent their social frustrations on any passing man in livery?” Tyvian shook his head even more vehemently. “Training peasants to use sorcery? Gods, it’s the stupidest crime I can possibly imagine. There isn’t even any upside! You probably just got scores of people killed because you felt a pang of conscience and now absolutely nothing has changed for the better. Hell, do you know the precautions I’ll have to take—that we’ll have to take now? Every Defender in the city will be out looking for you. This place is probably being watched. Gods, Myreon, it’s going to take me all night just to get back home without a tail!”

  Myreon kept her arms around Bree, but she didn’t look at him—he knew that expression, though. She was wrestling with her own demons. Well good. Tyvian hoped the demons were winning. He sipped his whisky with a sour expression.

  “I met with your mother,” she said at last.

  Tyvian rolled her eyes. “Join the goddamned club. And was she sympathetic to your little revolutionary plight?”

  “She told me justice isn’t real.”

  “Sounds like her, all right.”

  Myreon looked at him. Her eyes were sharp and focused again—she’d gotten whatever demon of regret was inside her under lock and key again. “You’ve been living—we’ve been living in a bubble, Tyvian. Everybody in this damned city is—maybe everyone in the world. Our plans need to change.”

  Tyvian frowned. “What are you getting at? This sounds suspiciously altruistic.”

  “I want to prove your mother wrong, Tyvian.” Myreon was watching his expression carefully, reading every line, every twitch.

  Tyvian laughed. “That is difficult to do, seeing as she’s almost always right.”

  Myreon leaned forward. “I saw something in you at that toll house. I want that Tyvian back. I want that Tyvian to do what is needed.”

  Tyvian sat forward. He could see her game now. “And so you think you can parade this . . .” He gestured toward the ragged Bree. “. . . person under my nose and what? Let the ring do the rest?”

  Myreon slapped the table in time with her words. “This. City. Is. About. To. Explode. Not just one riot, Tyvian—a complete insurrection. Thousands will die.” She reached forward and grabbed his wrist. “You can stop it.”

  “How?”

  “Become king.”

  Tyvian scowled. “You and I both know I am not the true heir.”

  “Who cares?” Myreon threw up her hands. Bree still huddled beside her. “Become king in all but name, then—you can do it. You know you can do it!”

  Tyvian stood up. “I’ve had just about enough of this! You’ve lost your mind, Myreon—you and your altruistic little hobbies are going to destroy you.” He pointed at Bree. “You can’t save these people, Myreon—no one can! We were safe in the House of Eddon. Comfortable. Happy. We can go back, if only we see my plan through!”

  Myreon shook her head, scowling. “You weren’t happy. If you were, you wouldn’t have moonlighted as a fence. You wouldn’t have . . . well, Voth would have never gotten so close.”

  Tyvian straightened. “Voth again?”

  “I wasn’t happy, except I knew I wasn’t. Hool isn’t happy. Artus isn’t either. Give him enough time to realize what people think of him, and Brana will be just as miserable as the rest of us. The only person who won’t get it through his head yet is you.”

  “Look, if you want to live the rest of your life as a fugitive in the sewers, be my bloody guest.” Tyvian turned to leave, but looked back at her once more. “If you want to come home, though, I’ll be delighted to have you. Ditch the peasant first, though. She’ll bring the Defenders down on all of us.”

  Myreon glared up at him. “Go to hell, you selfish prick.”

  Tyvian dropped a gold mark on the table, more than covering their tab. “People with blood on their hands don’t get to be smug.”

  He left out the back. Then, with regret, he pried up a sewer entrance and headed for home, his way lit only by the squares of light from the street drains and a smuggler’s memory.

  It was late, and Tyvian still hadn’t returned. Hool had wanted to rage at him, maybe hit him for abandoning them that afternoon, but he hadn’t come back. Something’s happened to him, she thought. Maybe something even he didn’t expect.

  Hool slipped out the window of her bedchamber, her shroud off, intending to find some deserted rooftop on which to brood. Even in this, the human world failed her. The houses in Eretheria were either too far apart to leap quietly or too low to the ground to give her privacy. She was left to choose between crashing atop a rich person’s house and waking the entire staff or settling lightly upon the thatch roof of a peasant and being easily visible from the street. So, she found a likely corner on her own estate and sulked there, a mass of golden fur and hurt feelings.

  It seemed to her that the past two years—ever since she got this stupid shroud—had been just one awkward and uncomfortable experience after another. Instead of standing tall and proud to face the world, she’d been lurking about in the shadows, her very image a lie. At least before she had become Lady Hool, nobody had paid her much mind. Humans might have thought her beautiful, but she was a
lso anonymous. Now? She evidently had a reputation. People wanted to “socialize” with her, which was a fancy way of saying they wanted to embarrass her or make her lie. She had all that money, too. It gave her power, perhaps, but it also curtailed her freedom. It was like a giant, golden chain clipped around her ankle. She ought to have knocked it off and fled into the wilderness ages ago.

  Here, though, in the heart of Eretheria, there was barely anything that qualified as wilderness. She was surrounded on all sides by a nearly endless sea of farmland, castles, pastures, and heavily lumbered forests. Even the limestone cliffs and mesas that dotted the southern landscape were riddled with quarries and mines and who knew what else. She was a wild creature trapped by her own safety and wealth. It was enough to make her want to howl. Much to her shame and anger, however, she did not. She didn’t want to terrify anyone who didn’t deserve it.

  If she stayed much longer among humans, she knew Brana would grow to emulate them even more than he did. He hardly ever spent time as his true self anymore. He was only a pup, true, and he had kept his puppy-ish ways, but for how long? How many more parties could they attend before he started acting like Tyvian instead of like her? With every passing day, she felt less and less certain of the future. She felt more and more terrified of what was happening to her and to her family.

  Hool sighed and leaned back against a rain barrel, frightening away a stray cat. Above her, the stars twinkled, far away and uncaring. She spotted the various constellations of her people—the Great Worg, the Hunter, Roogor the Leaper. She couldn’t see them all, though—only the Greater Constellations had enough power to be seen here, through the polluting light of all the streetlamps everywhere. It was only a little better outside the city—the rolling horizon obscured some of the low-hanging stars, and then to the south there was the ocean, horrific and endless. The very thought of it made her shudder.

  What do I do now? she asked herself. She had no answer. Even worse, she had no one else she could ask. She felt alone.

  That, she told herself, was the appeal of the shroud. The fake sensation of belonging it gave her—the sense that she was at least part of something. Even if it weren’t a gnoll pack, the human race was better than nothing.

  Every city Hool had ever been in she hated. Freegate had been filthy and cold, the thin mountain air filled with the foul stench of industry—forges and artifactories, tanneries and alchemical labs. Galaspin had been cramped and ancient—a maze of hard stone walls and hard-faced people with scarcely any room to breathe. Saldor, home of the Arcanostrum and all those magi, had been so crowded that the stench of the people overwhelmed her still, even in memory.

  Though not as crowded as Saldor or as filthy as Freegate and certainly not as claustrophobic as Galaspin, Eretheria felt like a city that was hiding something. Everything looked so clean and pretty and neat, but it was all a lie. All those big houses on the big main avenues just hid the run-down houses of the poor that clustered within every block. Those clean streets? They covered rivers of filth that ran just beneath the surface. Even the trees seemed to be in on the deception—pretty, pink-blossomed plants, all designed as a veil for every window, a shroud for every corner. And here was Hool, a wild beast shrouded by the illusion of a beautiful woman, taking part in the endless masquerade. Again, she felt like howling. Again, she refrained.

  “Who goes there!” It was a sharp cry from around the corner.

  Sir Damon!

  Hool fumbled for her shroud.

  Sir Damon’s eyes squinted against the darkness, his sword out, his buckler high. “I’m armed, sir, and a fair hand at a blade! Come out! Show yourself!”

  Hool got the shroud on and came out from behind the rain barrel. She looked at the knight with what she hoped was casual disinterest. “What are you doing here?”

  Sir Damon flushed red. “Oh my . . . I thought I saw . . . well . . . I was looking for you, actually. I wanted to see how you were. After . . . you know . . .” He took off his powdered wig. “Uhhh . . . how are you?”

  Hool turned away from him and walked toward the house. She really didn’t need this right now.

  Damon followed, sheathing his sword. “I understand if you’re upset with me. I only wanted to apologize, if I could.”

  “It’s the middle of the night,” Hool grunted. “Don’t you have something better to do?”

  Sir Damon searched for an answer. “I . . . well . . . that is . . . no. No I haven’t.”

  Hool stopped and squinted up at him. “Why?”

  “I was worried about you, as I said. And I’ve pledged myself to your service.”

  “That’s it?”

  He nodded, looking down at her with his weird brown eyes. “Yes. That’s it.”

  She rolled her eyes and kept walking.

  “It has been a difficult day, Lady Hool. Perhaps I could offer some . . . distraction.” He pointed toward the stables. “Can I interest you in a ride?”

  “No. I hate riding.”

  “A drink?”

  “No.”

  Sir Damon let out a deflating breath and muttered, “Dammit, woman.”

  Hool turned on him again. “Do you think I’m stupid? Don’t you think I know what you’re trying to do?”

  Damon’s face flooded with color. His shiny head even turned pink. “I . . . I . . . I . . .”

  Hool found herself yelling, “You think I’m pretty, don’t you? You saw me and you thought I was a pretty lady with money and maybe you could get me to fall in love, right? Maybe you could marry me and not have to pay your debts anymore?”

  “My . . . My Lady Hool, no! No, not at all!” He blinked. “I mean, you are certainly beautiful, but Eretheria has a lot of beautiful women, and . . .” He shook his head. “No, that’s not what I mean. I mean . . . I mean . . .”

  “You can’t even say it, can you? You can’t even say what you mean! You forgot how!” Hool snorted. “I’m through with you people and your stupid lies and your stupid rules. I’m walking home now. Go away!”

  Hool got about five paces away when Damon started after her. “At least let me escort you to the door!”

  Hool glared at him. She supposed she could have broken his leg, but he didn’t seem to be a bad person. He was just stupid. “Fine. But no talking.”

  Sir Damon extended his elbow. Hool stared at it. “I can balance on my own. Do you think I’m drunk?”

  Damon laughed. “No. But after the day we’ve had, I very well might be. I’d appreciate it if you held me up.”

  Hool sniffed softly—he did smell like wine. Not a lot of wine, but some people it seemed couldn’t drink very much before they fell over. Scowling, she grabbed his elbow and held on.

  Sir Damon blanched. “Not quite so tightly, please!”

  Then they walked, taking the long way across the front lawn. Damon, to his credit, didn’t say anything else. He did place his free hand over her own on his arm, though. His palms were sweaty, which made her skin crawl, but she let it pass. She could feel him relaxing as they walked, as though just being there with her was soothing. She frowned at this. Was she supposed to be some kind of emotional balm for this man’s problems? How stupid was that?

  Then again, he was a person to talk to. Hadn’t she just been wishing she had someone to talk to? “Are you happy?” she asked.

  Sir Damon chuckled. “Just now, or in general?”

  “In general. I know you’re happy right now.”

  She felt him stiffen at that, but he kept his voice level. “Oh. Well . . . I don’t know. I’m not destitute. I’m healthy. My current employer extends to me broad privileges.” He gave her a shy smile. “What’s there to complain about?”

  “Not complaining and being happy aren’t the same thing.” Hool rolled her eyes. “Say you weren’t—say you weren’t happy in general. What would you do to fix it?”

  Damon thought about this for a while as they reached the portico. “I’m not sure. I suppose I’d figure out what was causing the unhappiness and .
. . well . . . change it somehow.”

  Hool scowled. “That isn’t so easy. You make it sound easy.”

  “I didn’t mean to imply that it was,” Damon said, sighing. “Change is the hardest of all things, and it’s always ugly. Maybe that’s why so many people are unhappy—it’s easier to stay where you are than risk going somewhere else, even if you’d be better off in the end.”

  Hool bowed her head. “That’s what I thought.”

  The front door rose up before them. Serving specters opened it for Hool. She patted Sir Damon’s hand. “Here I am.”

  Sir Damon withdrew his arm and bowed to her. “Thank you for steadying me.”

  Hool snorted. “Good-bye.”

  Before she left, though, Sir Damon caught her hand. “One last thing, if you don’t mind.”

  “What?”

  “Is . . .” Sir Damon paused, took a deep breath, then continued. “Is Waymar really your brother-in-law?”

  Hool stiffened. “Of course not.”

  “Oh.” Damon looked lost in thought for a moment, then asked. “Then, are you and he—”

  “No!” Hool’s mouth slammed shut. “No! Never. No.” She shuddered at the thought.

  Sir Damon brightened. “Oh. Oh, very good then. Well, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Hool cocked her head. “Er . . . yes. I guess so.”

  Sir Damon grinned broadly. “Thank you for a lovely walk, milad . . . errr . . . Hool.” Then, with a bow, he skipped off in the direction of the stables.

  Chapter 20

  Belated Epiphanies

  After leaving the Wheel and Serpent, it was well past sunset by the time Myreon finally decided they could stop dodging from alley to alley and sit down to rest. The place was a bustling soup kitchen catering to day-laborers—little more than a patched canvas awning set up over a muddy stretch of earth behind a tiny shack containing nothing but a chimney, a cauldron, and an old woman with a ladle. Dinner was a copper—two if you wanted a bit of hard roll to dip in the watery broth. Myreon spent the two for both her and Bree.