Dead But Once

by Auston Habershaw

  Tyvian ripped off his borrowed shirt and threw it in the fire. “Yes, you bloody well should have!” It felt good to yell at her.

  She came close to him, her eyes straying to his chest and arms. “I’ll . . . we’ll talk after you take your bath.”

  “Kroth take that!” Tyvian spat. “We’ll talk now!” He unbuckled his belt and threw it on a chair. “But I’m going to take a bath now. If your modesty can’t handle it, avert your eyes.”

  Myreon took a deep breath, but didn’t avert her eyes as Tyvian stripped nude and slipped into the tub. The water was exactly the right temperature—hot enough to be bracing, but not so hot as to scald. He slipped in up to his neck, his aching body glowing with pleasure.

  Myreon took up a bottle of wine from Tyvian’s private stores and uncorked it. “I’ve been angry, Tyvian. I’ve been very angry for a long time.”

  Tyvian opened his mouth to say something and she put her finger on his lips. “Just listen, all right?” Myreon poured the wine. A serving specter brought in a second glass. “I grew up poor, understand? My family owned a vineyard and it was destroyed when I was little and most of my family died—bandit raid. This was in the years following the war, when Eretheria was a mess and Galaspin and Saldor’s northern domain was still in ruins.”

  She handed Tyvian the wine and he took a sip. A very good Rhondian white—a Cusaco, maybe a ’32. Myreon kept talking. “Anyway, my father was all I had—that and a few aunts who’d married men in Bridgeburg. He was a riverman, and I’d go with him on most voyages. I don’t know why he took me along, actually—he could have left me with my aunts, I suppose, but he never did. I don’t know if he could let go of me.”

  Tyvian shook his head. “Myreon, I know—ulp!” Myreon pushed his head underwater.

  “I said shut up!” she said when he came up, spluttering. “You don’t understand being poor, Tyvian. I never starved, I never froze—nothing as awful as that—but I had a constant understanding of being worse than everyone else. You—people like you and your mother—were just better than me, and that hurt. My father was a good man, Tyv. He was kind and honest and intelligent and loved me more than your mother ever did you.” She leaned in close, speaking softly in his ear. “But he was poor, and that made him lesser in the eyes of all the half dukes and guild lords and knights that he ever met. And that hurt.”

  Myreon placed her fingers on his temples and began to rub. Her deft, sorceress’s touch sapped all the tension from his body. He leaned back against the edge of the tub, letting the tiny bit of the Lumen she worked into the massage tingle throughout his body. She kept whispering in his ear. “When I became a Defender, it was because I wanted there to be justice in the world. I worked hard to earn my staff. I worked even harder to do what I thought was right. I was good at my job—my dealings with you excluded. And then, you know what happened?”

  Tyvian nodded. “They betrayed you. Framed you. Left you to rot.”

  “All for money.” Myreon’s voice got a hard edge. “They ruined everything I was over money. And they could get away with it, because I was just a jumped-up poor girl who no one would miss.”

  Tyvian leaned back, letting Myreon’s arms drape around his neck, feeling the soft warmth of her body behind him. “I missed you.”

  Myreon looked down from above him, smiling. “That’s because you’re a lunatic.” She reached up with one of her hands and brushed his hair from his brow. “If a handsome one.”

  Tyvian looked up at her. “I kissed her, Myreon, but that’s it. I swear.”

  “I know.” She nodded, sighing. “I believe you.”

  “You . . . do?”

  Myreon kissed him lightly on the forehead. “You’re right—you have been more honest with me than I’ve been with you.”

  Tyvian grinned. “You were saying about being angry?”

  “You know what’s the only thing money can’t control?”

  Tyvian frowned. “Trick question. Money controls everything.”

  Myreon shook her head. “Not sorcery—not the High Arts. You teach a pauper to cast a spell, and he can cast that spell forever, money or not.”

  “So you taught paupers to cast spells. Gods, Myreon!”

  Now it was Myreon’s turn to frown. “And why not? Why shouldn’t regular people learn sorcery to make their lives easier? Why shouldn’t I teach it to them? Who are the Defenders to say who can and can’t learn it?”

  Tyvian caught up her hand. “Myreon, my darling, they are the exact people who get to say that! That’s why they’re called ‘the Defenders of the Balance’—sorcery is unbalancing! Gods, how many times in the last few years have you and I almost seen whole cities destroyed by carefully unbalanced sorcery!”

  “The only balance the Defenders maintain is the balance of power—the rich over the poor, the landed over the landless. Your mother made that very clear.” She looked down at him. “You know it as well as I do, Tyvian. Probably better. You’ve been fighting them for ages.”

  “Yes, but not for the purpose of demolishing the status quo! Gods, Myreon—that won’t lead anywhere positive! You collected a pack of disgruntled peasants in the sewers and taught them spells and then they turned around and murdered a Count!”

  “No. They deposed a terrible man. A man who deserved it.”

  He stood up in the tub and wiped the water off his face. “You haven’t done those people any favors. You know that, right? You’ve also . . . you’ve . . .” He pointed to his burning clothes in the fireplace. “Look at what I had to go through tonight!”

  Myreon reached out to him, clasping him lightly on the hips. “Tyvian, don’t you ever want something more than just survival and comfort?” With one hand, she traced a half dozen tight little scars that criss-crossed his taut stomach. “Don’t you ever wish you could live without having to go through all this?”

  Tyvian sighed. “I thought we had been doing that—living alone and comfortable, surrounded by friends. It seems I was wrong. It seems that, all that time, you were sneaking away into the city sewers to teach farmers to throw fireballs.”

  “And you were meeting with smugglers to trade forbidden magecraft. It’s the same thing, Tyvian.”

  Was it the same thing? Had he been unhappy? Of course not! Bored, perhaps—a trifle irritable at times. Unhappy? How could he have been? He had drunk nothing but the finest wine and eaten nothing but the finest food for a year straight, and never once did a Defender try to kick in his door and haul him off. It should have been paradise.

  Myreon was smiling at him. “There’s something endearing about watching this.”

  “Watching what?”

  Myreon shook her head, still grinning. “Watching you figure out something about yourself that the rest of us already knew. It’s adorable. You always look like a puppy whose found his tail.”

  “Puppy?” Tyvian snorted. “A puppy?”

  She smirked. “A very dangerous, dashing puppy. With a pretty incredible abdomen, if I’m being honest.”

  Tyvian leaned forward and kissed her gently. “Are we? Being honest?”

  Myreon slid her arms around his neck. “I doubt it.”

  Tyvian and Myreon kissed again, this time a bit longer. When they broke apart, he found himself a little breathless. “I need to hear about you talking to my mother. I need to know exactly what she said.”

  Myreon kissed him on the neck, nibbling him gently. “Later.”

  Tyvian ran a hand through her thick, golden hair as she planted kisses on his chest and stomach. “We have a lot of planning to do, you know. The Blue Party is the day after tomorrow, and we need a new way in.”

  Myreon grabbed him and pulled him up out of the tub. “Later.”

  Tyvian agreed. Reconciliation required the proper amount of time. It would not be rushed. Or, at least, he desperately hoped not.

  Chapter 22

  The Breaking of the House of Eddon

  The Defenders of the Balance hit the House of Eddon with a volley of thunde
r-orbs first, blowing in the magically sealed doors and shattering all the windows on the east wing. They stormed the entry hall next—nobody was there, so there was hardly anything to stop their progress up the stairs toward Tyvian’s chambers.

  All of this Tyvian heard while wrapped up in Myreon’s arms, half asleep. The booms, the shouts, the pounding of boots on stairs—all of it seemed very important, but was it so important that he had to disentangle himself from the arms of a beautiful, naked woman and put on pants?

  Then a man swung a siege maul at the door to his bedchamber hard enough to make the oak buckle, and Myreon was on her feet. “Get up!” she said, scrambling about. She threw Chance at his face. “Tyvian! Get bloody up!”

  Their bedroom door banged open and, rather than Artus or Brana or Hool, there was a man in mageglass armor with a kite shield and an arming sword, of all things. Myreon threw a bolt of fire at him that rebounded off the shield’s wards. He raised the sword and roared, ready to charge her.

  Tyvian tripped him as he tried to round the bed and then jumped on his back. Chance was still by his pillow, so he ripped off the man’s helmet and raised it to bash in his brains. Just then, another Defender, this one helmetless and with a lit firepike, came up behind Tyvian, ready to spit him. Tyvian could feel the heat getting closer to his bare skin, but Myreon blinded him with a sunblast—lighting the bedding on fire in the process—and followed up with another fire bolt that took the oaf in the pelvic region, almost certainly setting some very sensitive things aflame. In the time it took for that to happen, Tyvian had knocked the first man over the head twice with his own helm. He stopped moving.

  Myreon had somehow managed to dress in a robe. She pushed Chance at him with a spot of telekinesis. “Let’s go! I’ll cover you!”

  A third Defender was in the doorway as Tyvian was coming out, shield up. Tyvian put Chance straight through the shield and straight through the mail-clad stomach of the man behind it without so much as breaking stride.

  Tyvian charged into the hall, still without pants. Brana had taken a man down already, but another Defender had him in a headlock from behind and a third was coming at him with a firepike. There were two men trying to beat in Hool’s door and another three coming in through the broken windows.

  Tyvian darted forward and slashed the man trying to gut Brana in the back of the knee, parting the leather there like gossamer. Blood poured down the back of his leg and the Defender staggered to one knee, screaming.

  Another one took a swing at Tyvian’s head with a siege maul, which probably would have taken his head clean off were it not for a magical guard that Myreon erected just in time. Instead, the heavy weapon rebounded off a flash of light, knocking the mirror-man off-balance. Tyvian ran him through low—through the kidneys, if his aim was true—and moved on.

  Brana slammed his captor back into the wall, loosening the grip for long enough to get out of the choke hold. The two of them still struggled, but Brana was gradually gaining the upper hand. The man threw a punch at Brana’s nose, but Brana ducked under it and, in a maneuver impossible for a human, but pretty standard for a gnoll, managed to twist his head and bite down on the man’s elbow—not the edge either, but the whole elbow. There was a deep, meaty crack and the man screamed in a way Tyvian hadn’t thought the human voice capable of. At the moment, it gave him a great deal of satisfaction—

  Until he was bashed in the face by another damned shield.

  Tyvian staggered back until he fell. As he was crashing to the ground, Myreon lit a man’s beard on fire and then used a focused telekinetic blast to send him straight out a window, and now Tyvian found himself on his back, rolling to avoid a falling axe. Brana kept growling, at some point Tyvian heard Artus shout out in pain, and the melee became something of a muddle. Just a swirl of knives, fists, swords, axes, and shields. Firepike blasts ripped around at too-close range, lighting the walls on fire. He couldn’t remember when, but Myreon must have put up a blade ward that prevented a sword from making his insides his outsides.

  Then came Hool.

  Tyvian had no idea what had taken her so long, but she was the catapult stone that brought down the wall, as it were. She kicked open the door the Defenders were trying to breach and emerged as her true gnoll self. Her roar was deafening—so much so that, for the briefest instant, everyone in the room stopped moving.

  Hool looked angry—very, very angry. Her growl was something almost too deep to hear, but still seemed to cause the room to vibrate. She seethed, her whole body pulsing with enraged breaths, her teeth bared. In her hands was a huge, enchanted mace that writhed with Fey energy so powerful it made the air shimmer—the Fist of Veroth. “Get. Out!”

  The Defenders did not get out—at least not fast enough.

  So Hool began swinging that mace, and the world seemed to explode all around her. Tyvian found himself sailing through the air with an assortment of body parts, stray weapons, and building material. He landed, miraculously, on a couch in the gaming hall.

  Hool had blown him through two walls and down a floor.

  Tyvian looked up to see a giant crack in the ceiling and the blue sky beyond. “Kroth’s teeth!”

  Somewhere above, Hool swung the mace again and the entire house shook with the shockwave. One of the great chimneys in the game room rocked back and forth, as though about to fall. Tyvian struggled to crawl out from beneath the debris covering him and actually managed it thanks to a combination of adrenaline and, surprisingly, the ring’s influence. He hated to admit it at just that moment, but he had actually missed that feeling of warm, encompassing power flowing up his arms.

  Of course, the ring only was giving him that power because it meant for him to save somebody. That somebody was usually Artus.

  There were cracks of lightning coming from the forecourt—the Mage Defender in charge of the raid was getting involved. Tyvian heard Hool roar and a lot of calls to retreat. He ran out of the gaming hall and into the half-ruined corridors of the rest of the house. “Artus! Brana! Myreon! Where are you?”

  A Defender popped around a corner and shot a firepike at him, the blazing bolt glancing past Tyvian’s ribs, causing the flesh there to blacken and blister. The pain was nearly unbearable, and he staggered against the wall. The Defender raised the pike, ready to fire again.

  But Artus stepped out of a doorway and sliced the man’s fingers off with a machete and, with his off hand, made a horizontal slash with another machete across the man’s face. The guards on his helmet kept him from losing his head, but Artus’s blade got through his lips and teeth. Any semblance of fight went out of the man as Artus kept bashing at him. The Defender fled, blood pouring down his chin.

  Tyvian staggered to his feet, his ribs screaming. “Good timing.”

  Artus nodded. “’Bout time I saved you from certain death.”

  Somewhere in the house, the Fist of Veroth struck again. There was an enormous crash, as though one of the House of Eddon’s massive chimneys had just been ripped from its foundations and flung across the property—which is probably exactly what happened.

  Tyvian and Artus froze, waiting for the roof to cave in. It didn’t. “We’ve got to get the hell out of here.”

  Artus grinned. “Way ahead of you. Brana’s getting the coach. Myreon’s creating a diversion.”

  “What’s Hool doing?”

  Artus pulled Tyvian by the elbow. “Killing everything, I guess.”

  They went out the back, into the ill-fated garden from the day before. Here Brana had somehow maneuvered their coach, complete with its team of two horses all harnessed and ready. He grinned widely when he saw them. “I did it! See?”

  “Get in! I can’t hold this much longer!” Myreon shouted. The thing she was “holding” was some kind of massive sorcerous guard—a shield of rippling Dweomeric force that sealed off the Defenders trying to pierce it from three sides. They had one avenue of escape, and that was straight through the thick hedges at the edge of the garden. Tyvian grimaced—ho
rses, he knew, weren’t very keen on running straight through hedges.

  They were less excited about fire, though, so he’d bank on that.

  Hool leapt down beside them—she had been on the roof, or what was left of it. She had her shroud and an iron key tied around one arm, the deadly enchanted mace in the other. “Let’s go.”

  Tyvian pointed at the hedge. “Clear that first. Hurry!” He looked up, scanning the skies—there. Griffons—two of them—circling, waiting for them to run.

  Hool slammed her weapon into the earth, causing a shockwave to uproot trees and rip apart all the hedges inside a twenty-foot radius.

  The horses bolted. Brana almost fell off the top of the coach. Had Tyvian not been standing right at the door, he wouldn’t have made it on. He looked back. “Myreon! Come on!”

  Myreon dropped the guard and feyleapt to the roof of the coach. Behind them, the Defenders formed a firing line and shot after them, but the range was too great and the bolts of fire went wide. They did nothing to calm the horses, though.

  Hool leapt atop the coach as it passed as well. A moment later, she passed a pale, exhausted Myreon through the window and then the Fist of Veroth and then herself. They were a jumble of arms and legs and weaponry bouncing around inside. Outside, the Eretherian countryside was ripping past at incredible speed; the coach rattled so fiercely, Tyvian thought the wheels might fall off.

  “Brana doesn’t know how to do this,” Hool observed. “Go and help him.”

  Tyvian grimaced, wondering briefly if he should point out that he was still completely naked. And injured.

  The ring gave him a pinch.

  “All right. Fine.”

  He poked his head out the window only to almost lose it to a passing signpost. Brana was clinging to the reins, tongue lolling out one side of his mouth, and grinning from ear to ear. “Brana,” he shouted, “turn us around!”

  The gnoll nodded and flicked the reins. Nothing happened, of course—Brana had only told the horses to go faster. A shadow passed over them.