by Voss Foster
Gileal huffed. "My apologies for what befell your director."
"Yes, what befell him is terrible. Good thing no one actually did anything to cause his fingers to break. That would be terrible." Swift jabbed a thumb into the throne room. "In there. Some people who would like to speak with you."
"Of course."
Gileal passed him by, but Swift jumped in, I guess making sure that Gileal would hear him when he spoke to King. "If you hear anything, burn the body. If we're not out of there in a reasonable amount of time, burn the body. If anyone makes a face that looks a little too annoying, burn the body."
"My pleasure." King nodded and stepped to the side of the door. I honestly wasn't sure what was happening, not really. There was probably some sort of plan, but anything that would have been put together was cobbled and quick and I definitely wasn't in on it. It also meant Swift and the others only had so much information.
We all walked into the throne room. Instead of Shivan and Levat, the queens of Tarwald sat on the conjoined glass throne, staring at the doorway, frowns plastered on their faces. They were the first people I'd seen who weren't immediately shocked at the sight of a group of shapeshifters walking in front of them."
Jalima nodded. "You tried to kill my son."
Gileal responded without missing a beat as he sat in the first of the chairs laid out in the throne room. "You subjugated my people for three thousand years and never once thought it might have been a problem."
Jalima didn't respond to that, instead just waited until we'd all sat. Her eyes focused on Svenson at the end of the row. "Your hand."
"It's fine." His voice was strained and sharp, so that was clearly a lie. "Take care of what needs taking care of."
Jalima nodded. "We would like to open with an apology. And for the record, we were going to go public. We know it's been too long, and we know it's wrong. There is no making up for that mistake, but we were willing to try making amends."
"And yet you didn't. Knowing full well how things went, you sided with the traitorous Sekari. You kept your silence. And now you sit in wait for us, willing to burn the treasure stolen from us so long ago out of your own vindictiveness."
"Our own vindictiveness?" Estil sat forward, imposing as anything with her height on that throne. Her words were breathy and shocked. "Our vindictiveness is the issue at hand?" Her voice quivered, and she moved to the very edge of the throne, almost risen from the seat entirely. "I don’t want to hear anything of our supposed shortcomings from child murderers. Kidnappers. I was ready to make the statement until we realized the extent of your cruelty. Issuing the apology to you and the other shapeshifters would have undermined everything and kept you from being brought to some semblance of justice, if that is even possible, given what you've done."
"We have done nothing. The children are alive."
"Several are dead, and you're planning on killing the rest." Swift was finally back in the game. He pulled his chair over to sit next to Queen Jalima, where he could scan across the whole lot of us. "Or are you going to try and tell me that the elemental kids who died in the Mundane weren't a part of this?"
"They proved…more difficult to control than we anticipated. The young ones sometimes escaped and sought help before their deaths. The older ones were useless to us. We could not let our faces be seen and reported. Not until the time came."
That drove the cold deeper. Niila had been unsealed, at least partially. And she'd gone stumbling, looking for help in her desperate final moments. Maybe Karak, too. Or was he considered one of the older ones? I didn't know. I just knew that Gileal spoke of them with no emotion beyond rage. No remorse. No sorrow. If anything, just an implication that they shouldn't have made murdering them so difficult on the poor shapeshifters.
Swift scoffed. "You have gallons of blood on your hands."
"The Sekari have oceans." Gileal smiled up at him. "And you are powerless to do anything to my people. I would remember that going forward. If you intend to play on some sense of remorse we should have for our actions, then I can assure you no one in this room regrets the steps taken. Those children are the product of thousands of years of an oppressive Kingdom at work. Their blood on the ground is the only way for their predecessors to pay for our imprisonment."
The shapeshifter guard on the far end of the row shifted in place at that. So maybe there wasn't complete comfort in the ranks of King Gileal.
"How does that fix anything?" Swift raised one eyebrow and crossed his arms in front of his chest. "If you murder them all, how does it fix what happened? Tell me that."
"This isn't about fixing the unfixable. You're a lowly human. You squabble over the tales of desert cults, or who lives atop natural resources. You would never understand."
"Right. Much better to fight over who gets to hold onto a rotting old corpse."
Gileal shot up. That was the button. That was the bad thing that no one should have said. He rose and he grew to twice his size in an instant, suddenly barely fitting inside the confines of the throne room. "You dare insult Echeni before me?"
"I dare to do a lot of things. And you're going to behave." He waved the walkie back and forth in front of his face. "Or did you forget who holds the cards."
"Do you think you can give the order faster than I can rip your throat from your body?"
I glanced around. The other shapeshifters were still shifting uncomfortably, but not one of them attempted to come to Gileal's aid. Just a tiny bit, my heart warmed up to them. They were still guilty, but at least they weren't here for this insane despot. Not all of them.
Gileal's hand expanded out and he knocked Swift aside. The walkie talkie skittered across the floor. So did Swift, right until he crashed into the wall. "This negotiation is over, Nathanael Swift." Gileal snorted, a massive gust of air that tossed sand into the air. "We will take Echeni and we will find the royal family, and their bodies will be hung in the streets as warning to all those who would commit such atrocities again."
I looked up at Gutt and, as subtly as I could, inclined my head toward the door.
He nodded.
I ran.
My heart crashed against my chest, blood rushing so hard I couldn't hear anything else. I wanted to stay to try and protect Swift and Svenson and Gutt. I wanted to go rescue Agent King from whatever fate had befallen her. And I couldn't fucking do any of those things, because that wasn't part of the mission. I could judge that out for myself, even with the world spinning and everyone changing god damn sizes and all that insanity.
Someone had to be at the body. I didn't know where King was, but I knew I wasn't going to find her if I stood around the throne room.
Gileal swung his arm low. I sped up, flicked aside, and rolled. His fingers just grazed my back, stopping me short, but I scrabbled up and ran my happy ass through the doorway and out into…a sincere lack of massacre. It stopped me for a breath, seeing all of the agents still standing at their posts.
All of them except King and the agents protecting those doors. I scanned as I jogged through them. When I heard footsteps and clattering and shouting behind me, I poured on the speed and swung into an open chamber to the left. So far, no shapeshifters tried to stop me, but I wasn't stupid enough to think they'd never come. Even the ones who disagreed with Gileal probably wanted their treasure…well, not burned down to nothing.
Not paying attention to anything but not being killed by angry shapeshifters, I ran straight into King's back and, unfortunately, knocked the torch out of her hand to clatter to the floor.
"What the actual fuck?" She whipped around and fixed that anger on me, even as she scooped up the torch from the stone floor. "I'm burning the body, why the hell are you running into me?"
I stared like an idiot instead of talking. It was on my resume, actually. Special skills. In the OPA, it came in handy a lot. There in the center of the room hung a corpse. It wasn't rotting, as Swift had suggested, but there's just a certain quality to a dead body versus a living one. The way her
limbs hung with no muscle tension, the truly expressionless face. And she bore the bandages here and there, caked in dried brown blood and not covering nearly all her scars. This was Echeni. This was the treasure. And the air around her prickled like lightning.
I tore my gaze away. "Gileal attacked before he could get you the message. Someone had to be here to—"
The door burst open, Gutt and Swift's bodies flying through it, one on top of the other. I immediately reached around King and pulled out her sidepiece, and she grabbed Echeni's hair in one hand, the torch in the other.
King Gileal shrank through the doorway, still raging and blazing. But he stopped dead when he saw King holding that torch. "If you burn her—"
"Then you lose everything and this was all for naught." She inched the torch closer. "You committed crimes, and now that the head of the OPA is out of commission…well, I'm the senior-most agent. Command falls to me and decisions fall to me. And my decision is to burn this and let the Kingdoms sort you out, because I can guarantee someone here knows how to handle you shapeshifters."
"I will kill your FBI director where he stands." He waved behind him and two shapeshifter guards dragged Director Svenson into the room. "And we will kill you, and no one will be able to find us when all of Al-Sekar is dead and everyone who knows of our location is buried under a thousand tons of glass." Gelial's eyes were wide and mad, staring through King like daggers. His broken, uneven pupils dilated into dark pools. "Drop the torch."
"This continues without Svenson. This continues without Swift or me or Dash or Gutt. Our people back in the Mundane will see to that. They'll get forces from Nedelwald here to take every one of you down. And as to what happens to her?" She inclined her head to Echeni. "That depends on how nice you are. It's a historical artifact, it's certainly not FBI policy to burn things just for the negotiating tactic." She waved the torch back and forth, nearer and farther from Echeni's hair. "On the other hand, who knows what could happen if a fight breaks out. A stray ember is probably all it would take to burn up a body this desiccated, don't you think?"
King Gileal vibrated in place, never once taking his eyes from King. I saw the twitch of his jaw, the subtle expansion of his legs. My whole world slowed and I took stock of my breath.
He jumped.
I shot.
His hand just grazed the front of King's shirt as he thudded against the floor. And that was it. I'd shot the king of the shapeshifters. Go me.
I heard a groan from the doorway that ripped my attention back around. One of the shapeshifter guards was doubled over, clutching a glowing golden ring around his middle. And more importantly, he had no hand on Svenson anymore. I glanced to Gutt and, still on the floor, he was raising up some sort of glowing red energy around his left hand. Svenson struggled against the second guard. I was ready to fire, because I knew what was coming from those malleable fists. But Svenson got his feet properly under him just long enough to land a solid blow to the yellow bastard's crotch I guess even shapeshifters had dangly bits, because that guy went down.
Svenson jogged his happy ass over to the rest of us. Swift and Gutt were both groggily rising to their feet, and King and I moved in front of them for whatever pitiful protection we could manage.
"You would be better off moving away." Gutt's voice was shaky and rough, but still definitely him and sounding nice and lucid. "Unless you'd like to fall unconscious as well."
I moved aside and he tossed his prepared magic at the remaining shapeshifter guards. Two bolts of red whizzed forward, striking them both center mass. The guards slumped to the floor, and all was silent for a few seconds.
But I couldn't keep my big mouth shut. "Didn't think to try that at any point before they flung you bodily through a door?"
"Would you like me to undo it so you can have a tête-à-tête with them? I didn't think so." He got to his feet. "My focus was on keeping King Gelial from murdering the two of us until he threw us down. I took the first chance I had." He dusted off his pants. When he went to take a step, his left knee popped back and forth, leaving him wobbly every other step. "There are more, and the children need to be found."
Swift staggered a moment. His foot shouldn't have been at that angle, and he had too many bloodstains for comfort, but he still stood tall. "Gutt, we need Fazil. We won't be able to see the shapeshifters, but she should be able to hear them."
He nodded and summoned up a sheet of paper. With a glowing light at his fingertip, he scrawled out a missive, then sent it winging off into the ether. "How are they going to react to Gileal's death?"
"We keep that under our hats as long as we possibly can." Swift glanced at the king's corpse, then hobbled his way to Svenson's side. "Eric?"
"I'm fine. I'm sure your medic can fix up my hand when we're back."
The air next to him shimmered and Fazil walked out, draped in a deep scarlet robe today. "My, this place is busy." She closed off the portal, then nodded to Gutt. "I'll do what I can, but I'm only one very old woman. If I can't hear the shapeshifters, I can suss out those kids. Yes, even if they're unconscious. Everyone has to dream."
Swift nodded to her. "Thank you."
"It's a service to the Kingdoms. And Gutt promised me a case of cognac."
"I certainly did not."
"And yet you're already considering whether you should give me two cases for this work. One will suffice." She spread her hands out in front of her, fingers splayed. She only took a single step before stopping dead. "It's all right. No one is going to hurt you so long as you cooperate."
Fazil stepped aside, lowering her arms. Right next to her, a shapeshifter slowly rose into size from the floor…with a small, red-skinned boy in her arms. Couldn't be more than three or four to look at him.
I was over as fast as I could get there, handing the gun to King and taking the child into my arms.
The shapeshifter held her hands in front of her, shaking her head. "Please. I mean no harm." Her eyes flicked to the body, now leaking blood, on the floor.
I glanced to Swift. He nodded and looked to the woman. "Can you contact the others? Tell them if they come forward with the children, we're willing to help them." His voice was harder than when he'd spoken with Gileal, but I guess being shoved through a door might have pissed him off a touch. "If every single child isn't accounted for, we have a team of mind readers to find them, and the seals they've invented in the last three thousand years are a lot harder to break."
King snorted. "And if you don't cooperate, your precious treasure goes up in flames."
She nodded. "Many will come willingly. Most others will follow." She was trembling as she reached into a deep pocket on the front of her robes. She came out with a circular stone tablet, red and about an inch thick. It cast light as soon as she put both hands on it, and she spoke into the center softly. "Brothers and sisters. Gileal has fallen. Return the children…and the treasure will be kept safe. Ignore this request, and Echeni will be lost."
My head throbbed. We had the perpetrators of these crimes here before us, and we were going to…what? Vouch for amnesty because they chose to cooperate eventually? But at the same time, I thought of soldiers in the US sent to the Middle East or to Vietnam on questionable motivation. Could I blame them for listening to their leaders? Was it the same?
Not for the first time, I was damn glad Swift was in charge of the OPA, not me.
The second and third shapeshifters arrived, both with more elementals. And from there it built. We moved very quickly into the palace entry hall to try and mitigate the hysteria. Their king was dead and bleeding on the glass floor, and their long-lost treasure floated right next to him.
The first woman who arrived turned into a de facto leader for them. She was no longer trembling or shaking, but actually seemed confident in herself. I guess it helped that we didn't shoot her on sight.
When the first twenty had arrived, she walked back over to Swift. "My name is Chenka."
"Well, Chenka…I don't know what to do with any of
this." He shook his head. "I appreciate your help, but you all kidnapped and were ready to murder children, not to mention large numbers of people here in Al-Sekar and at least six humans in the Mundane."
She nodded, breaking eye contact. "King Gileal had many of us left without option. There is no trade with the other Kingdoms in Fukal. Eventually, our economy stagnated and died, so all wealth fell to the whims of the royal family. If the king was displeased with you, you didn't eat." She dragged her eyes back up, wide and dark, straight onto Swift. "I have two daughters at home. When he asked, I had to agree. Another would have stepped in to fill my part of this tragedy, and we would have starved."
Wow. Okay, then. King Gileal was even losing credit with me after his death. That was impressive.
Swift nodded to her. "It's all a mess that's going to have to be sorted out at some point. But we will do the best we can. I keep my promises. I can't speak for the Kingdoms, however. They will want retribution."
"I understand that."
Queen Estil and Queen Jalima marched over from the throne room. They stopped right next to Swift, and when Estil spoke, her voice creaked forward, harshly restrained. "You took our son. You attempted to kill him."
"I don't deny this." She nodded. "No amount of apology or punishment can make right what was done in the name of our King. Even so, as a mother…I am sorry." Chenka's eyes sparkled with tears. "I am sorry. But wouldn't you do anything to keep your children fed?"
Queen Estil shook on the spot, then turned and ran off. She didn't quite disguise the sob that slipped out as she disappeared back into the throne room. Jalima nodded to Chenka. "Wouldn't you still want our heads on a spike, even if we did this for our children?"
"I would."
"Good. As long as we're on the same page."
I took another count of the room. It seemed like we had all the kids. We'd have to triple check that count, though. The elemental children were led—and in some cases, carried—off to the throne room. Casey was there administering treatment, getting them conscious, alongside some elementals…just in case something went wrong and one of them was unsealed and tried to blow us all up or something.
