You know, got to say . . . shockingly cute seeing Valentine Ward flabbergasted by something. Even if I’m pretty sure she’s the one who ended up drinking the drugged glass of wine, either on accident or after Ceinwyn switched the glasses.
Also got to say, again: fuck me is this bad.
Okay, so it’s blue, whatever, but why does it have three pussy lips?
Mom! Don’t ever say ‘pussy lips’ again!
“How?” Ceinwyn repeated tersely.
We were lucky it was night and that Ceinwyn didn’t have her daily anima pool or the both of us might have been trading anima conjurations right now, not on any basis other than our natural reactions to foreign threats. As it was . . . there was Ceinwyn Dale in PJs, covered with a silk robe just like the one I remembered from my first day at the Asylum. Her expression was only slightly less shocked than Val’s had been that first time I showed up from the Geo Realm.
Least Ceinwyn hasn’t slammed me into a door yet.
Val poured herself what looked to be her fourth or fifth glass of wine. “I see why you do this now too,” she muttered.
“Yeah . . . last time it went so badly for me I stopped doing it,” I pointed out.
Val glanced at the glass after she’d chugged half of the wine down her throat. “Can I stop tomorrow, please?”
“Sure thing, sweetie. I think you’re about to pass out anyway.”
She sat down on the floor, hugging the mostly empty bottle. One hand had the wine glass pressed up to her lips, which didn’t look like it was leaving until she lost consciousness. “I’ve never panicked before,” she whispered to herself. “I don’t like it . . . I feel all fuzzy.”
“She’s fine, King Henry,” Ceinwyn said. “I switched our glasses and she’s getting a taste of her own medicine. Tell me what’s going on. Tell me: how?”
My only answer was to pull the World-Breaker from behind my back and to hold it up between us.
Ceinwyn gasped at the sight of it. “King Henry,” she whispered, “what have you done?”
“I grew up,” I told her seriously. “You thought you had time to let me be a teenager, Ceinwyn. But that time is long gone. I am what I am and there’s nothing you or the Lady can do to save me from it. So I grew up, stopped asking, and made a plan to steal me some truth.”
“Steal . . .” Ceinwyn muttered, distraught. “I don’t know what to ask first.”
“Shit, Ceinwyn, I just needed two more days. Why couldn’t you give them to me? This would’ve been easy then. Now . . .”
She laughed one of her barks. “It’s not as if I tried to be here to surprise you, and I’d like to point out you surprised me a whole lot more. I still don’t . . . anyway, Alexander is being petty and saw fit to cancel the hotel room I booked. I decided to see how Valentine has progressed in these last six months, especially if I have to promote her again so you two can be together, no matter how many times we tell you that you shouldn’t be . . . then she decided to drug me and I very much wanted to find out why . . .”
“You roofied my girlfriend.”
The first hint of a smile. “She started it. Was even sloppier than when Moira tried to do it as a Single, quite disappointing . . . one expects more out of your underlings, even when they’re trying to drug you.”
“Can we just . . . talk?”
She nodded at the couch and sat herself, but I didn’t. “You have a lot of explaining to do.”
“So do you,” I said, walking over so I was across a small table Val had set up by the couch. There was an untouched glass of wine on it.
“You say you’ve forgiven me, but it doesn’t feel like you have,” Ceinwyn rebutted. “Or that I’ve forgiven you, if I admit to having my own feelings regarding the matter. Are we still all the way back there, King Henry? In that room? In tears? Will we always be in that room? Why does it feel so broken?”
I sighed, feeling tired . . . barely-slept-for-six-months-and-had-your-plan-finally-go-to-shit tired. “We ain’t in the room, but I been thinking, maybe forgiving ain’t the same as being on the same side.”
She nodded, like what I said sounded right. “I suppose that’s true . . . I would like to be on the same side, but not if the precondition is surrendering to your inquisition.”
See, here I was. Finally. What I wanted all that long time ago. Did I be an asshole again or did I show I actually had grown up? Hard, but I resisted the urge towards my natural inclination. “I don’t need your surrender, I do want answers, but mostly . . . I know I was a kid, even when I graduated. I ain’t anymore. Might not know everything still, but part of being adult is the realization that the other adults don’t know shit either. So . . . you want to be on the same side? Easy. Accept me. Stop treating me like the other kids, cuz I ain’t ever been like them, we both know that. It’s time, Ceinwyn, no more saving me from it. Need to accept me as part of the One-in-a-Billion World.”
Her chin rose in some defiance of her own. “A pretty name, but we don’t call it that.”
“Yeah, yeah, numbers don’t actually work out, I know. Still . . . thirteen people on the whole planet; small club, ain’t it? Guess it’s not just thirteen. Learning Council, Guild, Rejuvenation Society, old families like the Roots and Welfs and Eriksons and even more. Still, seven billion people and what, we got it down to a few thousand who even suspect the truth? Worse . . . maybe no one knows the real truth . . . just the lies they been fed by our masters.”
Even more defiance, defiance I liked seeing. Meant she hadn’t surrendered any more than I had. “The Divine Court does not rule this world,” she hissed.
“I think they do. Layers of rule at least. On a certain level it’s about how much we’re willing to push them back and how deep they’re willing to drink. But if the end found us and only one species survived, I don’t think it would be mancer society that came out on top. In fact, I don’t think it would even be fucking close the way they have us so fractured at the moment.”
“You watched Mordecai Root bring down Eresha; you know they’re not all powerful, all knowing, or truly divine. You spied on them.” She pointed at the World-Breaker in my hands. “You hid that from them and stood before them and lied about it being destroyed.”
“And when’s the last time anyone’s seen Balhad or Kien or Amarusa?”
Ceinwyn blinked as she took in those names. She recognized them, I could tell. She just couldn’t believe I knew them myself. Unlike Val, she had never stood in the Geo Realm. Unlike Val . . . cuz I don’t think anyone else in this world had for thousands of years. Just the people I’d included in Team Don’t Lick the Vamp Clit. Thousands of years, if not tens of thousands, all the way back to whatever was before that war Meteyos mentioned.
“How do you know about those three?” Ceinwyn eventually asked.
“I stole it. Just like I stole the list for the Maximus among us, Bloodsinger.”
Her eyes finally found the light. “You’ve been using it to break out of the Cleansing Sphere! You’ve been stealing from the Guild Vault, you magnificent little shit!”
No question, only a statement. I twisted the World-Breaker around in my hand. “You all know the name, know the legends, but you don’t know what it actually does, do you? You just know the Vamps fear them to the point of locking them away . . . you don’t know why. None of you have seen the other side beyond what nightmares or dreams you’ve gleaned while sleeping.”
“You can travel from place to place with it like some kind of teleporter, obviously,” Ceinwyn fixated on the logical, not the realm-jumping, crazy-even-for-the-Crazy truth. “We also know they’re meant to distill natural anima in some way . . . but no one has successfully created one in over five hundred years.”
“So long the world forgot; imagine how much else it’s forgotten in ten thousand?” I pointed out.
Ceinwyn sat back on the couch, trying to come to a decision. I let her think. Did some of my own. They don’t fucking know, at the top of it. It wasn’t some massive conspiracy to ke
ep thirteen whole worlds and peoples and even dragons prisoner. They might suspect something or look at the legends and wonder, but they didn’t think of it as somewhere you could travel to. It wasn’t real. It was . . . legend and myth and . . . extinct. What they did hide was the true strength of the Divine Court over us, hide it even from themselves, all the while mancers played the respectful opposition to the likes of Nii-Vah and Inanina and Pwent. ESLED searched after nothing more than rogues, at best a corrupt Duke or Duchess that rated nothing in the real scheme of things.
Nothing of the real powers, the eldest and most dangerous of the Divines.
Mixed up in all this was something about the Mancy. Some reason why mancers were made to lie to their own about the true extent of their powers. Why were we taught to pool five minutes instead of thirty? Why didn’t we know our own strength until we were judged old enough for it? Why even then were we cautioned against using it?
“You have to do something for me, King Henry,” Ceinwyn finally came to her decision. In her demeanor and posture I could see it was that decision. The one she had passed on the last time we really talked. In her head, she had just moved me from pawn to knight. Still some upgrading I’d need to do, but a big improvement over only being able to pull off en passant on occasion. “Some laws I don’t break and this is one of them. But there’s a key. There’s a reason I’ve always been able to confirm some of your guesses to you, but not to others. I can do even more if you let me, if you just say the right words.”
A key.
A key Ceinwyn had hidden because she worried about me getting hurt.
A key that would let Ceinwyn Dale do what she did best: work between the laws and twist the world in her favor.
I just had to figure it out.
“Vicky told me there’s a loophole for all the thirty-three reunion Mancy tricks,” I started witling my block of soap. “Male heirs of Old Mancy families get told so it doesn’t get lost.”
“Similar to that rule, yes,” Ceinwyn confirmed. “But greater.”
Greater.
Greatest?
Our eyes met like they had hundreds of times before. Ageless blues and common dirt. “There’s no going back from this one,” she warned me. “It will change everything.”
I nodded, finally accepting reality. This wasn’t a caper, it was a suicide mission. It was the Pit of No Return. “I knew deep down . . . lots of new strings, right? Not the same as the old ones, maybe not the ones Massey wants since we still have to deal with his bullshit, but . . . get the feeling I’ll have to worry about stuff a few sizes bigger than before.”
“Bigger than cage fights or Hector Vega shooting up your shop at least,” she agreed.
“Well, at least this means we ain’t fighting no more.”
A smile finally formed on her lips. “Oh, we aren’t done yet. I’m still yelling at you for being so rash and ignorant once all the explanations are finished and we’ve hugged it out.”
“Hugging?”
“Yes.”
“We have to?”
“Customary.”
“If we have to, I guess . . .”
“Say the words, King Henry, or all I can do is nod my head when you show a clear understanding of fact and nothing is clear at these levels.”
I sucked in a deep breath to steady myself.
In the silence, I belatedly heard Val’s snoring. Also belatedly noticed she’d passed out hugging an empty bottle of drugged wine. At least if we have kids it’ll make a good story . . . did I ever tell you about the time your ma was so shitfaced she slept through your Aunt Ceinwyn and me changing the world together?
Change the world.
Forget the superplex, we’re diving off the steel cage!
Not three little words this time.
Few more words. Big words too.
Wasn’t just saying them to get the knowledge I wanted from Ceinwyn. Was doing it to make a string between us, was doing it to accept myself, was doing it . . .
First time in my life, I accepted Fate. My fate. My responsibility that went beyond all my previous responsibilities. Couldn’t be the lone man with the fruit flies after this. Was more than Anima Madness, was more than Paine, was . . . ten thousand years of lies and injustice I was picking up and placing on my shoulders.
I ain’t a hero, so my motives weren’t pure. Not a crusader taking up his sword for the holy order. But maybe . . . maybe I found my weapon by accident and maybe I’d been learning how to use it these last six months. Maybe if I broke the world I could fix it just enough so it started working again.
“My name is King Henry Price,” I declared to Ceinwyn, because ‘declaration’ is the only word that fits the magnitude, “and I am the Maximus of the Earth.”
Ceinwyn closed her eyes, the first person to recognize the magnitude of what I had done. In the moment they opened, they had never seemed more all knowing, more ageless, or more omnipresent. “I greet you, Glassbreaker.”
You got goosebumps?
I had goosebumps.
Shit, Prince Henry had goosebumps.
“Now what?” I asked.
“Now I’m not breaking any laws. Also, I will forestall the hundreds of questions on hundreds of subjects that I already see forming in your brain and we’ll begin with a story. I’ve known this story since I was a teenage girl, thanks to my upbringing. Most only learn when they join one of the mancer governments like the Learning Council or gain sufficient rank, like as a Guild Counselor. A very few, like you, come into powers beyond their age and have it told to them when they are recognized by another Maximus.
“I was one of those as well. The Lady was aware of Nii-Vah’s open practices with knowledge and took it upon herself to inform me when I graduated as a Four Year. I was taking my month off to return to Nii-Vah and . . . the Lady wanted me aware of the truth. She went even farther with her hinting than I did just now with you, writing down the exact words I was to say.”
“You were eighteen when you became a Maximus?” I asked. Keeping silent through all this would be impossible. Not for me and my curiosity.
“So you did work out what happened between Fines and Eva,” she commented on something else.
“Yeah . . . plus Massey has this list of all of us in the Vault, including who he thinks will replace us. So I figured people became one instead of just . . . being one from birth like with an Ultra.”
“There are always thirteen of us, one for each discipline. We represent the nexus of our discipline’s powers. I like to think of it as the Mancy’s way of keeping us strong, since a Maximus will always be a mancer . . . even without training. Even if all our knowledge was wiped from the face of the Earth, a Maximus could still teach the Ultras and Intras afterwards.”
“So the Vamps would have to wipe out humanity to wipe out the Mancy,” I thought aloud, thinking that might explain a few of their frustrations.
“You’re getting ahead of me,” Ceinwyn scolded.
“And you suck at telling bedtime stories with all this preamble shit,” I pointed back at her.
She sighed to steady her temper. “Are you done?”
“Lady told you when you were eighteen,” I repeated back to her where she left off.
“The world changed in 1919,” Ceinwyn began again, “it became the world as we know it, not the world as it was before. The World Before was carefree and wild and not without its merits, but also with many problems. You’ll remember from your History of Elementalism classes most of the recorded history. Augustus’ laws and Rome’s civil wars, the Codification of Elementalism in Greece, the master-apprentice structure that held as long as anyone could remember. The wars between East and West as the vampires destroyed Rome, took Constantinople and dealt Elementalism a great blow until Islamic mancers struck back hundreds of years later.
“It’s all true, but as you claim, perhaps it’s only true because they’ve held back. I don’t agree with you that they’re overlords of humanity, but I do agree with you that their
ways are not our ways . . . as I’ve said before, they are very beautiful monsters. We’ve fought them many times in the histories. Each of us has had our ascendancies and our retreats into the shadows of history.”
“Right, I get that and we’ll keep the side argument for later,” I interrupted, “but what about before?”
“The next interruption will earn you a paper-cut along your forehead so everyone is aware you received one,” Ceinwyn threatened me, already pooling anima in anticipation.
“Fine,” I grumbled.
“Before, as I was getting at, was different. For all historians without a written record, but especially mancers. It’s a history of legends, of a dream unremembered, of ancient pottery with half missing words we can’t decipher. We’ve always known there was something long ago. Artifacts, skeletons, scribbles by anima concentrations, all quickly hidden from mundane eyes. It was only in 1919 that we learned the truth.
“Population exploded in the early twentieth century and with it so did the number of mancers. National schools were already forming as a more unified approach to Elementalism, bringing the disciplines together as never before. By the eighteen hundreds, Her Majesty’s Royal Conservatory was already pulling from every colony of Great Britain and others were following suit. Where before there were hundreds of Ultras for each discipline, now there were thousands of them.
“Then the war started. World War One as the mundanes call it. For the first time in history, we did our part. Yes, certain singular mancers had engaged in battle before for various causes. But never companies and regiments, never had the Guild of Artificers or the Rejuvenation Society seen its membership split due to nationalism. We warred and we killed mundanes by the score, killed our fellow mancers as well.
“The amounts of anima used were obscene. So obscene that there were . . . disruptions. Creatures from legend appeared at random . . . sometimes alone, other times in groups. It was all covered up by each side, but we couldn’t ignore the oddities once the armistice was declared. Once mancers traded the stories we only heard more, of elves and giants and mermaids, of dreams of something beyond, of minds in the darkness that whisper. Sometimes they whisper support, but others whispered for our doom.
The Pit of No Return (The King Henry Tapes Book 6) Page 39
