Table of Contents
The Mirrored CIty
Copyright
Acknowledgments
1. Isik
2. The New Dawn (Heath)
3. The Salon of Forgotten Gods (Maddox)
4. Desperate (Soren)
5. Devil's Bargain (Heath)
6. In Her Arms (Lyta)
7. Diviner (Maddox)
8. The Song of the Sea (Jessa)
9. The Palace of Keys (Soren)
10. Tea Time (Lyta)
11. Honest Work (Maddox)
12. Making A Play (Heath)
13. Awakening (Soren)
14. Room 26 (Maddox)
15. Conversation (Lyta)
16. Lady of the House (Heath)
17. Artifacts (Sword)
18. The Diving Bell (Jessa)
19. The Libertine (Libby & Sword)
20. Overserved (Lyta)
21. Blood Magic (Heath)
22. A Fistful of Seals (Maddox)
23. Battle Buddies (Sword)
24. Bedlam (Lyta)
25. The Maw (Jessa)
26. Victory Round (Maddox)
27. Skin Deep (Heath)
28. Rescued (Soren)
29. This Again? (Maddox)
30. Skin Walker (Shannon)
31. War Council (Jessa)
32. Revelation (Heath)
33. Syzygy (Soren)
34. Scorned (Lyta)
35. Nightmare (Sword)
36. New Fathers (Maddox)
37. Into the Breach (Heath)
38. Family Traditions (Jessa)
39. Reflections (Maddox)
40. Scions of Patrea (Shannon)
41. Vessel
42. Sacrifice (Sword)
43. The Short Night (Lyta)
44. The Coral Throne (Jessa)
Coda (Petra)
-
Glossary
About The Author
Copyright © 2015 Michael J. Bode
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1517287146
ISBN 13: 978-1517287146
Edited by Karen Robinson of INDIE Books Gone Wild
Proofread by Tia Silverthorne Bach of INDIE Books Gone Wild
Cover and Interior Design by Inkspiral Design
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to thank my fans and supporters for their support: Lindy, Ian, Stephen, Casey and Lozano.
This would wouldn’t be possible without the support of my editor, Karen Robinson, and my designer, Matthew Bright.
ONE
Isik
THE NECROMANCER ISIK followed the Patrean guard. The streets and narrow alleys of Dessim were still a mystery to Isik. The walls were riddled with tiny alcoves, shrines to any of the thousands of gods the people of the city worshipped as part of the Host. A god of tax evasion was currently quite popular.
“What’s your name?” Isik had a thick Volkovian accent.
“Fox,” the Patrean soldier replied.
They all looked alike, so it was impossible for Isik to tell if he should have known the guard or not. Fox was not a familiar name.
Isik nodded. “In Volkov, it was easy. The Patreans wear their names on their uniforms so we can tell them apart.”
“It’s not often people here even bother to ask,” Fox commented.
“Then what do they call you?” Isik inquired.
Fox shrugged. “Well, ‘Hey you’ and ‘excuse me’ are pretty common. But it gets more colorful when I make arrests.”
Isik sighed. “It is a shame. I think if everyone looked alike, the world would have far fewer problems.”
“If the world had less violence, I’d be out of a contract,” Fox quipped.
“And if fewer people were murdered, I may have to take up a craft,” Isik admitted. “Still, I think it’s a better world where you do not constantly have to interrupt the coroner’s dinner to drag him to the scene of a murder, yes? Perhaps we could make paintings.”
Fox chuckled. “I’ve only ever been good at fighting.”
“And I have only ever been good at necromancy. But with all the fighting and dead people, who has time to discover other interests?”
Fox led Isik down a narrow alley. “You were there. At Rivern. What was it like?”
“Ugh,” Isik groaned. “Watery tentacles rose from the riverbed and tore the city to pieces. People were dying by the droves in their sleep from a plague of Harrowers. I came here to get some peace.”
“I hear the heroes of Rivern are in the city,” Fox said.
Isik offered a silent prayer to the Ancestors. “They were too late to be heroes. Rivern is a disaster, and so many are dead. It will be decades before it is whole again. That is why I came here. The river is small.”
“The new Stormlord is a citizen of the Protectorate. That gives us a fighting chance.” Fox sounded encouraged. The Fodder couldn’t have been older than twenty summers, maybe less given how quickly they reached maturity.
“No one person should have that much power,” Isik complained. “I am somewhat powerful, but even the infamous necromancer Pytheria cannot destroy a city in a single evening.”
“We’re here,” Fox said.
Isik looked at the colorful marquee above the poetry café. He shuddered with inward revulsion. The nuanced theater in Volkov was the sole aspect of his home city-state he actually missed. He preferred the sterile mechanical contraptions of Rivern to the flowery wordplay of the Dessim poets and novelists.
Isik threw open the door. What he saw froze him in his tracks.
A male, early twenties, hung by his leg from the ceiling over a stage at the back of the café. He was naked from the waist up, with bare feet. The ligature discoloring around his ankle indicated he had been hung within the past day.
Darla, the red-robed blood mage, was already there, swirling a sample in her copper dish. Her discipline dealt with life whereas Isik’s dealt with death, but they found complementary alignment in murder investigations. Isik had to admit she was quite attractive for a woman approaching middle age.
His attention returned to the body. A pair of black wings were affixed to its back, upside down, the tips stretching toward the ground. Isik neared the young man and noted a circular tattoo on his chest. He was a seal mage, probably part of the Guild of Correspondents. The mark on his chest would have enabled instantaneous long-range communication with anyone who bore a similar mark.
“Did he call for help?” Isik asked.
Another Patrean, a lead inspector by his badge, replied, “Not that we’ve determined so far. We’ve sent investigators to the Guild, but no one’s stepped forward with any information. Many of them are still asleep.”
“How does that work? Can seal mages communicate when one party is asleep?”
“Not reliably,” Darla answered. “But the Guild operates continuously, and he should have known at least one of the mages on duty.”
Isik nodded and approached the suspended corpse. He needed to see the eyes. His art had many applications, but the primary reason cities employed necromancers was for their talent to see the cause of death in the eyes of a corpse. Murderers generally knew to remove the eyes or hide their faces, so determining foul play was a straightforward endeavor.
Isik gazed into the man’s cold dead eyes.
A second later, he stumbled back. “Fuck.”
The inspector asked, “What did you see?”
Isik glanced sideways at the inspector. “A room full of dead bodies, hung upside down. Pieces missing from most of them. The killer came from behind. The room looks like a warehouse: peaked roof, wooden rafters, at least twenty feet long. It’s so dark I can’t see the end. The body across from me looks Genatrovan, but the face is cut off. Seven other b
odies are hanging, all male. One of them is missing an arm.”
“Fuck,” the inspector said.
“There’s a fucking crazy person killing people,” Isik concurred.
TWO
The Binding
MADDOX
The first century of the Mirrored City’s history is marked by an endless cycle of revolt and oppression. The Ohanites, a devout splinter religion of the Hierocracy, believed in moderation, purity, and social conformity. The anarchic Omnitheists, who were mixed believers of all other religions, believed in exactly the opposite and prized individual freedom.
King Sulidan the Wise, whose parents were of differing faiths, was concerned only with which path would yield the greatest social good. To quell violence, he authored a social experiment, known as the Compromise. The city proper would be split into two halves, one for each side.
Nearly four hundred years later, no conclusive answer has been reached. As part of the Protectorate, each government alternates sending representatives to the Grand Assembly. As this representative holds the influential swing vote, the proposals put before the Grand Assembly often wait for a year that favors a particular policy.
—DORIAN BRAND VIII, HISTORY OF SARN, VOLUME SEVEN: THE LONG NIGHT AND AFTER
HEATH LOOKED OUT across the Mirrored City as the sunrise painted long intricate shadows from the railing of his balcony. Like all buildings in Dessim, the apartments were hewn from black marble. Across from his building, over the wall that divided the city from Baash, an identical five-story tower of white marble looked back at him. On a matching balcony, a man in a long white tunic and pants was smoking something.
Each side had been given the same buildings and infrastructure. And each side had been given a mission to prove, once and for all, which way of life was best. In Dessim, Heath’s building served as long-term housing for visiting dignitaries and merchants. Judging from the white laundry hanging from some of the balconies, it was family housing in Baash.
Heath sipped his bitter herbal tea. He almost gagged every morning he drank it. Maddox had convinced Heath it would help with the cancer growing in his stomach. It had, in fact. But it left him feeling weak for several hours a day. He finished it and went inside.
Maddox was dead, slumped in an overstuffed purple chair, staring vacantly into an empty fireplace. The mantel was littered with figurines of nearly every hearth deity in Creation.
“You alive yet, buddy?”
As if on cue, a golden light flickered over Maddox’s body. Color returned to his skin, and his dead eyes blinked. He made no effort to move.
“Maddox,” Heath asked. “How are you feeling this morning?”
“Like I want to be dead again,” Maddox stated dully. “Where’s my Sword?”
Heath stood in front of Maddox, kneeling to look into his sad green eyes. He’s responding. He’s coming back, but it sucks to see him like this. Maddox had been temperamental, belligerent, drunk for a good portion of the day, and very rarely, quite charming. The Inquisition had squeezed all of that out of him, turning him into a hollow shell because they were afraid of his immortality and knowledge of the Grand Design, the Seal of Seals.
Heath said, “It’s going to be fine. You’re recovering, Maddox. You have to start feeling some of the bad stuff before the good stuff comes back.”
“It’s all bad stuff. My whole fucking life. I don’t want any of it,” Maddox said.
“You’re a well-regarded hero of Rivern and a personal friend of the empress. You have more gold than you could spend in a lifetime. It’s not all bad.”
“Give me the Sword,” Maddox pleaded. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
Heath stood. “No. I’m not giving you that sword ever again.”
Maddox looked confused.
Heath clarified. “You can start getting it yourself.”
Maddox groaned and lolled his head to where the Sword rested against the wall, a large red heartstone resting in the hilt and crossguard. Feebly, he reached out for it, but his hand fell to his side.
Heath sat down at his desk and started reviewing paperwork, ignoring the noise. During his time in the Inquisition, he had learned to tune out the cries of the people he tortured, and he knew Maddox’s plaintive moans sounded worse than they actually were. The papers contained every bit of information Heath could find on the seven ruling families of Baash. Normally, hereditary rule was forbidden by the charter of the Protectorate. The Ohanites, headed by those same seven families, had found a loophole: tell their faithful whom to vote for.
Heath heard the clang and skitter of the Sword as it dragged across the floor. He heard the chair topple over and dump his friend onto the ground where he could presumably reach the weapon.
“Fuck,” Maddox, now possessed by Sword, said. He climbed off the floor and whirled the blade in his hand. “You can’t keep doing this to us, man. You don’t know what it’s like for him every time you separate us. Hells, it sucks for me, too, because I remember it happening to him. He doesn’t want it—”
Heath turned in his chair. “You’re going to have to give him back his life eventually, Sword.”
Maddox rolled his eyes. “You keep saying that shit, like the gestalt is a bad thing for both of us. I’ve never been such a badass in either of my lives since the Long Night. I’m effective now. And he has the rest of eternity to get himself right in the head. I don’t understand why you’re pushing so hard.”
Heath tilted his head back and sighed. “I don’t know how much time I have or if these remedies you concoct are even working. I have a suspicion that if I don’t make this happen, you’ll never let him go. He needs to make that decision when he’s not hurting so badly he doesn’t have a choice.”
“Since when are you so concerned about my vessels?” Maddox scoffed. “Kondole may have invested you with the power of a Stormlord, but that doesn’t make you a fucking saint. Wringing your hands over my temporary crisis of personal agency does not wash away the blood of the untold dozens whose choices you removed by murdering them to achieve your own objectives. Or the lies you tell people to get them to do your dirty work. At least I’m helping someone.”
Heath raised his hands. “You’re right. You and me—we’re bad people sometimes. I’m going to do some very terrible things to get the Grand Assembly to ratify an alliance with Thrycea. It’s why we’re here. But Maddox was never a murderer, and he’s going to have to live with the memory of the choices you make. Forever.”
Maddox frowned.
“The people you’ve taken before—they died when you separated. How well do you think Catherine would sleep after all the things we showed her? Humans are fragile, Sword, and one day that body might become the next Achelon with the power to enslave all of creation. Do you really want him to turn out like us?”
Maddox rubbed his temple and then sighed like a scolded child. “No. I suppose not.”
They stared at each other in silence for a while.
“You need me for any of this?” Maddox waved at the papers.
“No.”
“Good. I’m going to go get wasted.”
Heath sighed and returned to his papers as he heard Maddox clomp out and slam the door shut behind him.
Heath drew a lot of attention as he made his way through the streets. He was of Bamoran descent, which meant darker skin and, with it, an uncomfortable legacy of oppressing the lighter-skinned Turisians who made up half the city. He also had silver eyes, a hallmark of the Thrycean Stormlords, the sworn enemies of all the Protectorate stood for.
The people of Dessim were Omnitheists, believing in all gods as part of a collective Host. In Rivern, he had been transformed by the physical manifestation of the deity Kondole, the Father Whale, who was a peaceful representation of weather magic. The whale motif was currently in fashion, with representations of Kondole painted on colorful murals, whale medallions, and alcoves carved into walls like miniature altars. People either ran toward him to receive blessings or ran the
other way.
Heath smiled and took it in stride as he made his way to the Guild of Correspondents. The building was a large open hall with a winding queue of people snaking their way to a panel of tellers at a long wooden counter. Behind them, seal mages in brown cloaks scribbled on sheets of paper at rows upon rows of writing desks. Off to the other side was a row of private numbered booths. Heath strode toward number thirteen and entered. It was a small coffin of a space, but it muffled the sounds of the hall.
A ginger-haired seal mage with a pimply complexion regarded Heath from behind a small desk, a mesh partition between them. Heath took a seat.
“Heath?” the seal mage asked.
“Yes. Jessa?”
The seal mage’s eyes fluttered closed. “I am Gantrick Bower. The mage of record on the other side is Edwin Turnbull. He is corresponding with Sireen. Are you ready to begin the pass through?”
Heath nodded. “I am.”
The mage sighed and rested his head for a moment. The change in demeanor was unsettling when he raised his head. The bookish scholar leaned forward seductively and twirled an imaginary strand of silver hair. “How’s the Mirrored City?”
“More ridiculous than I remember,” Heath said. “Where’s Jessa?”
“She’s breastfeeding so delegated me to this task. Besides, I’m going to be of more use to you. Have you made contact with the Inquisition?”
“What’s the passphrase?”
The scholar’s head tipped back as he laughed. “Mistrustful to the last. The passphrase is ‘new dawn.’ Satisfied?”
Heath crossed his arms, wondering if Turnbull was imitating the gesture on the other end. “How’s the baby doing?”
“Oh, Torin’s adorable. But lately the only way he can sleep through the night is to be submerged in a cauldron. It’s something Satryn apparently did to Jessa as a child. I can’t speak for my late sister’s parenting ethics, but it seems effective.”
Heath shrugged. “I met with Abbot Argus yesterday. He was none too pleased to see me, but he isn’t as powerful or treacherous as Daphne. He handed over information on the seven houses of Baash. They’re religious fanatics, Sireen. Their whole government basically comes down to one Patriarch, and he does not support an alliance.”
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