The Patriarch’s bedroom was gold plated. Heath staggered for a second to admire the fact that every inch of the architecture had been wrapped in gold leaf. While it lacked in the majestic arches and domed ceilings of the other houses, it utterly destroyed them in sheer opulence. In the center rested a four-poster bed that reached the ceiling with heavy green curtains. To the sides were archways to the attendant’s quarters. The Patriarch and Matriarch had a retinue of servants ready to attend their every need.
Heath walked softly to the bed and pulled the curtain open.
Ibiq Qaadar was a rail thin man with white beard and hair. His wife was considerably younger and more attractive. They lay peacefully in the sheets, their bare legs intertwining.
Heath popped his right springblade and rubbed the edge with a poison-soaked cloth he kept in his belt pouch. Satisfied the numbing venom was applied, he drew his blade against Ibiq’s wiry gray-haired thigh. Abraevium knives were the sharpest in all Creation, so sharp they could part skin without anyone knowing. With slow and surgical precision, Heath opened the length of the femoral artery in Ibiq’s thigh.
Like Heath, Ibiq was also a healer and could remedy his injury if he awoke. He did not, and Heath watched while the old man bled out. It took less than a minute for him to stop breathing.
Satisfied, Heath stepped back and charged one of the stained glass windows full force. The glass shattered around him. In Dessim, the housing behind the central palace was small homes with rooftop gardens. It was the same here. He just needed to live through the landing.
He willed his body to relax and prepared to roll when he hit.
Pain shot through his body as he tumbled across the grass rooftop beneath him. His shoulder took the brunt of it and flared in painful response. The cuts from the glass covered his arms and face. He rolled onto his back and pressed his hands against his arms.
The warm glow of Light spread from his fingers. To anyone’s knowledge, he was the only person in Creation to be both a Stormlord and healer. People who were born to it, like Jessa and Sireen, couldn’t master other forms of theurgy. And since becoming a Stormlord himself, Heath had felt his Light depleting. Still, it was enough to heal the cuts, broken shoulder, and most of the bruising. The other pain he could endure as he scuttled off the rooftop lawn down to the streets below.
“The Patriarch? Are you fucking kidding me?” Maddox shouted as he waved the crumpled broadsheet in Heath’s face.
Heath sat at his desk quietly penning his letter of condolence. “He had a long fruitful life of exploiting people’s religious beliefs for his own gain. He refused to even speak with me, so I had to advance our agenda.” Heath dipped his quill into the ink pot and continued writing.
“You’ve been a Stormlord for exactly nine months, and the first person you kill is the head of a democratically elected government. By the Guides, who in the hells are you? I thought you were trying to have a conscience.” Maddox tugged at his hair.
Heath smiled. “The old me would have murdered him for pocket coin, no questions asked. This is about building something that will last when I’m gone.”
“I fail to see how that’s an improvement.” Then Maddox admitted, “I’ve been a Stormlord before. Their brains don’t work like ours… it changes you.”
“What I’m doing,” Heath said calmly as he made his signature on the paper, “is ensuring Assembly support for the retaking of Thelassus for our friend, Jessa. Now if there had been any valid reasons for Qaadar’s refusal to assist us, I would have addressed those. However, there were no reasons aside from a bigoted hatred of societies that don’t conform to his narrow set of values. The world does not need that kind of person in any position of power.”
Maddox nodded. “Okay. That’s fair, but what about people who murder other people for their personal beliefs?”
Heath folded his hands together. “When those beliefs affect the people I care about, they aren’t personal.”
Maddox sighed and plopped down on the overstuffed chair in front of the fire. “They are going to come after you with everything they have—”
“Why would they even suspect me?” Heath asked incredulously.
Maddox shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. Stormlords have a reputation for assassinating people. You’re a highly trained assassin who’s also a Stormlord. You come to town and hey—look at that—someone who disagrees with you is assassinated within weeks of your arrival.”
“And?” Heath asked. “It would be stupid of me to actually do it, especially when it undermines my negotiations with the other houses of which the Assembly vote is just a piece. Plenty of people who want Ibiq dead, many of them in his own family, might use this time as an excuse to make a regime change.”
“Except you did it!” Maddox protested. “When they subject all the suspects to the Veritas Seal, none of them will be lying when they say it isn’t them. Someone is going to point a finger your way, and they are not going to put you in a magic fishbowl while they build a case. Satryn pretty much ruined diplomatic courtesy when she destroyed half of Rivern with water tentacles.”
“It won’t come to that.”
He frowned. “I just wish you’d have talked to me. You bring me all the way here to the ass end of the Protectorate and you fucking ignore me. You won’t so much as let me kiss you because it would be a ‘distraction.’ Every time you see this face, you see Maddox and, buddy, how you treat Maddox sucks.”
“None of this is easy for me.” Heath stood and grabbed Maddox’s shoulders. “When I came home after slitting that old man’s leg open and watching him bleed out… do you know what thought kept me awake?”
“Planning your next murder?” Maddox ventured.
“I was worried about you, both as Maddox and my best friend Sword. I want you back as my partner, and I want Maddox to be happy. But I can’t have you as both.”
“You still love him,” Maddox said. It was always odd to hear him talk in third person.
“Gods no,” Heath chuckled. “There isn’t a word for what I feel about him. Protective maybe?”
“I’m two out of three people in a love triangle, and I’m still the odd man out. Unbelievable!” Maddox threw his hands up in exasperation.
“Once Maddox is safe, I’ll find you a body that isn’t as capable of these feelings. And things will be like they were before between us. Not all your incarnations are this… needy.”
Maddox turned and walked out the door. “Go fuck yourself.”
“Where are you going?” Heath asked.
“To give your name to the authorities. Where do you think?”
If Heath had thought there was even a chance Maddox meant it, he would have been dead before he could slam the door and clomp angrily down the stairs. Heath let Maddox go.
Heath shook his head and grumbled to himself, “I will not miss this drama when I finally separate those two. It’s like being married forty unhappy years to an alcoholic with the maturity of a teenager.”
He had work to do.
THIRTEEN
Awakening
SOREN
Those born under the sign of the Twins express duality. Readings can sometimes be difficult because those born at the same time under the star share an interconnected fortune.
It is said that every person born under the sign of the Twins shares a soul with another. They may never meet, but their lives are intertwined. When reading someone under this sign, the Diviner must always consider the existence of a paired destiny.
—DIVINER’S GUIDE TO THE STARS
SOREN STRODE THROUGH the circles of couches and patterned folding screens that dotted the open atrium of the Palace of Keys, shaking hands and slapping the backs of the clients. He had been astonishingly cheerful these past few days and felt like he was bursting with energy. He flirted and smiled. For the first time he could remember, he wasn’t burdened by illness or hunger.
He kept well fed, and his arms started to fill in nicely, even though he hadn’t been that
active. He’d taken to wearing his tunic open so he could feel the appreciative brush of a client’s hands on his body. He liked being touched, the sensual warmth of another person’s hand on his skin. It wasn’t sexual, although he did find himself erect more often than he ever remembered as a teenager in the orphanage.
“I hear you hand out keys or some shit in this place,” an older gentleman, maybe twenty-six, with messy brown hair and green eyes said impatiently. He was slight of frame, and his breath reeked of alcohol. Soren didn’t recognize the man, so he was probably new.
“I can do that.” Soren walked over to his podium to choose a key from the cubbyholes. They were numbered for each of the rooms. His eyes rested on the one for the room beneath his, where he had heard the screaming. He avoided giving it to any of the guests, but inwardly… he wondered if management would suspect him if he didn’t hand it out. He had a good thing at the Palace and didn’t want to end up on the street again for breaking a rule.
He took the key for room twenty-six and handed it to the stranger. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. He’d learned from chatting with patrons that people liked all sorts of strange things done to them. “Here you are. Right up the stairs at the top.”
The man accepted the key from Soren’s hand.
When their skin touched, Soren thought he was having another episode. But he realized he wasn’t falling ill. He felt a jolt of energy like with Rebekah, only stronger. It was nearly magnetic, and he found himself lost in the stranger’s rough beauty. Something about him left Soren speechless.
The man tugged the key out of Soren’s hand, narrowing his eyes. “Thanks.”
Soren stood dumbfounded by his profound fascination. He never found men attractive. That sort of thing happened at the orphanage because it was only boys, but he had allowed Keltis’s brutal affections mainly out of survival.
The man rolled his eyes. “What?”
Soren gulped. “Nothing.”
The man was already marching up the stairs.
Samantha was curled into her usual spot on the couch, basically ignoring everyone as she worked on her poetry. Since Soren had started, she barely talked to anyone and didn’t seem to mind his being the new face of the Palace. She spared him a brief glance and nodded gravely in a way that gave Soren a chill. She knew more than she said, but it was better not to ask.
At the end of the night, the stranger had not emerged from the room. Soren learned from Sam that some rooms had back exits, to preserve the secrecy of what was inside. Soren busied himself collecting glasses and dumping out the uneaten fruit. They had staff to do that, but he felt uncomfortable not tidying. At the orphanage he’d be punished for keeping a messy common area.
He carried two fruit bowls to the back room and tossed out the picked over bunches of grapes and a couple of bruised apples. The rest could last until tomorrow. Satisfied that he’d tidied up, he headed back to his room but froze when he stepped into the atrium.
A stunning woman with flawless, nearly jet black skin reclined on one of the couches with a handsome but nondescript man with straw blond hair. “Hello, Soren,” the woman said.
“We’re closed,” Soren said.
“We are,” the woman agreed. She had a posh Thrycean accent that made everything she said sound like a formal decree. “We’re your employers and this is our establishment.”
“Oh.” Soren shuffled nervously. “Hi.”
“Do not be alarmed,” the woman said. “We are pleased with the work you do here. Very pleased, aren’t we, Ryon?”
“Very,” Ryon said. His face betrayed no emotion.
“I don’t know your name.” Soren smiled and offered his hand.
“Sybil,” the woman said, looking at his extended hand. Her tone was pleasant, but she made no motion to reciprocate his handshake. “You have been very good at your job, Soren.”
Soren awkwardly withdrew his hand and brushed it on his leg. “Thanks. I don’t do that much.”
“Have you ever studied the Arcane Principia of Chaos?” Sybil asked.
Soren shook his head. “I didn’t have much school.”
Sybil laughed and cocked her head appraisingly. “No, I don’t imagine you did.”
Ryon spoke, “The ancient wizards imagined that there was a pattern to seemingly random events, provided they were truly random. The problem is that when you start to record random events, the act of measuring them influences the outcomes. It becomes very hard to find truly random representations of the will of Creation.”
Soren offered a grin and a shrug. “I don’t understand.”
“That might explain it,” Sybil said to Ryon casually. “His unawareness may give him clarity in the selection of the keys.”
“Yet the outcome did not favor us, and he had never drawn that key before,” Ryon argued.
“Why did you choose to hand out the key to room twenty-six?” Sybil asked.
“I realized that I never gave it out, and I wanted to follow the rules,” Soren said.
“That key can only be noticed under very special circumstances,” Sybil explained.
Soren stammered, “But if that’s so… then why was someone in there my first night?”
Instantly, he knew he had said something incredibly stupid.
Sybil placed a hand against her chest and rose to comfort Soren. “You’re not in trouble. That’s not what this is. In fact, we think there’s a home for you here. A real home. And a real family. We’ve been waiting a very long time to meet someone like you.”
Soren stepped back. “Really?”
Sybil nodded and smiled. “Yes. In fact we’d like you to help us with management.”
Soren regarded her skeptically. “I just hand out keys… and you want to put me in charge?”
Her fingers brushed his cheek. “More than that. But I can’t tell you—I have to show you.” She withdrew a key from a pocket in her dress and dropped it into his hand.
Soren flinched. It was twenty-six.
Sybil smiled. “Haven’t you ever been curious about what happens in these rooms?”
“I’m not a curious person,” Soren said meekly. Or a very smart one.
Sybil smiled. “You are like a young oak that thinks itself a weed. You’ve lived so long in the shadows of others that you feel small, weak, insignificant. But you are not, Soren. There is power and potential in you. You’ve felt it since you came here. I know you have.”
Soren nodded. “Keltis gave me medicine that helps.”
“You don’t need that poison.” Sybil ran her fingers up his arm. He felt a slight tingle and a chill as his hairs stood on end. “We can show you something much better. We can make you whole.”
Soren smiled. “Thanks, but I’m fine. I’m happy to just work.”
Sybil laughed and cast a glance back to Ryon, who was sitting motionless and stone faced on the couch. “He’s precious, isn’t he?”
Ryon stared at Soren blankly with dark empty eyes.
Soren stepped backward and stumbled into an end table, sending it crashing to the floor and tearing through a paper screen that divided another sitting area. He turned quickly and set it right. Fumbling, he turned back around to see Sybil and Ryon standing right there, side by side.
“Ah!” Soren shouted.
Sybil intoned, “I cannot allow the person you are destined to be to never exist because of fear.”
Ryon grabbed for Soren’s arm, but he twisted away, knocking the table over again and leaping backward.
Sybil and Ryon calmly walked toward Soren, each taking a different route. The exit lay behind them. They were closing him in, and his heart pounded. The key, the room of screaming, the feel of her touch on his arm… something in his bones knew this was wrong.
He bolted around the edge of the room as fast as his legs could carry him. He never ran as a child—he got winded too quickly—but something else inside him took over. A need to survive. He dodged the furniture and vaulted over couches.
Sybil and Ryon tore aft
er Soren. They were fast and spread out to catch him between them. Soren dove for an opening, but Ryon reached it first and loomed in front of Soren. He skidded to a stop and fell over, trying to avoid slamming into Ryon.
He reached for Soren.
“No!” Soren shouted.
A blast of unseen force knocked Ryon backward, hurling him toward the railing of the second floor of the atrium. Soren was so stunned it took him a moment to realize the power had come from him, from his outstretched and trembling hand. I don’t have magic. They tested me in the orphanage.
Soren scrambled to his feet, but Sybil grabbed his neck and lifted him off the ground like he weighed nothing. He kicked his legs and flailed his arms uselessly. Above, Ryon recovered calmly and removed a bloodless wooden banister from his gut. He glowered.
“You had more secrets than I imagined,” Sybil whispered. “It’s a pity I will never know what they are. But sometimes a mystery is more rewarding than an explanation.”
Her hands tightened around his neck, and he heard his spine shatter. He blacked out almost instantly but had enough time to realize he was going to die.
He tried to scream but couldn’t.
FOURTEEN
Room 26
MADDOX
I Z G I A Z M V H K J H F R A
N S R E S S A P S E R T Q E R
C B N V G R D R E A E Q Z W Q
U S L I T B D N K Q N U E O G
B P D Y W C O D A S P A W R M
U T L G T T X B R I J D A R B
S R I P E U W T P W L N C A H
B A V Q P I I M P R D L E H S
U W C C Y Q L B O D O K I U X
O O I N T S L E E C S T B U Y
M A U K Y G D S F V X U E E Q
J Y E Z W B I Q T O C H L A A
T Z Y X Q G E J A C M B W N N
F G I V N G E G U E N H P A D
Y V G L Q F X S C H I M E R A
—A GRAMMATOMANTIC LETTER SQUARE. IT IS SAID THAT A SKILLED DIVINER COULD SEE HINTS OF THE FUTURE FROM THE RANDOM PLACEMENT OF THE LETTERS
The Mirrored City Page 9
